


On Wings of Steel

by captainshakespear



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2017, Happy Ending, M/M, Mechanic Dean, Robot Castiel, Science Fiction, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 09:25:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 36,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12504232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainshakespear/pseuds/captainshakespear
Summary: Tensions are still high after Sputnik’s recent launch into orbit when an unidentified object falls from the sky and crashes off the coast of Maine. It turns out not to be a satellite, but a man. His name is Castiel, and he sports enormous, albeit damaged, mechanical wings. Dean and Sam happen upon him and, trusting he means no harm, agree to help keep him safe while he repairs his wings, even though Castiel can’t remember exactly where he needs to go once he does. But harboring Castiel isn’t a simple task, especially when it looks like he might not have to find out where he came from—they might hunt him down first.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Confession: I have wanted to write this fic for 5 years. It has changed a lot since I first discussed a couple of scenes with [Kate](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thychesters), but I think it's for the better. I'm very pleased with it, and I'm extra pleased to be finally sharing this with you guys.
> 
> On that note, this fic is dedicated to [Kate](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thychesters), my best friend and partner in crime. Love you. Nerd.
> 
> My undying and eternal thanks to the people who read, edited, encouraged, and remedied plot holes along the way: [Anna](http://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots), [Sara](http://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures), [Bexy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/inplayruns), and [Claire](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mishcollin). This thing would be like, a tenth of the quality it is now without your insight and funny comments and sharp eyes for typos.
> 
> The marvelous art for this fic was done by [Francesca](http://iamjustgod.tumblr.com/), who was a pleasure to work with. The masterpost can be found [here](http://iamjustgod.tumblr.com/post/166803872876/).
> 
> This fic is based on the movie The Iron Giant (thanks Brad Bird for making one of the best films ever), my childhood favourite, but I've changed a lot. Absolutely no knowledge of the film is required for enjoyment of this fic—and on that note, enjoy!

_October 1957_

* * *

Heavy sheets of rain pour down onto Rufus’ boat from above as the sea sends wave after wave crashing into the hull from below. The boat rocks wildly and it’s all Rufus can do to keep her pointed towards what he hopes is shore. He’s shivering and swaying on his feet, and the water leaking into the cabin is the cherry on top of the two-tier cake he didn’t ask for.

“This is Walker Blue to Mission Control, I’m caught in a storm and requesting nav assistance, do you read?” He’s greeted with nothing but static, barely audible over the rain pounding down on the roof of the cabin. “Do you read?” he repeats, louder, as if volume will help.

More static is all he can hear for a long time. Suddenly, he picks up a quiet but distinct change in pitch of the noise: a voice, though barely coming through, but getting stronger, until Rufus can almost make out a word or two. Reluctantly, he picks up the radio for a third time. “This is Walker Blue to Mission Control. Bobby, you there?”

“—‘m here,” comes Bobby’s voice, and Rufus feels relief wash over him like the water over the deck at the sound of his husband’s voice. “What’ve you—...—caught up in this time?”

Despite the circumstances, Rufus can’t help shouting back, “Oh well my bad, I guess when I got out of bed this morning I forgot to pick out some nice weather to go with my blue shirt.”

“Quit your whining, I’m alre—...—the sonar. What’d you say your location was?”

“I didn’t. Damn storm’s kicking up waves like you wouldn’t believe and I’ve lost my bearings. Must be somewhere off the coast of Maine, though. Near Rockwell, hopefully.”

“—t the lighthouse?” Bobby asks.

Rufus closes his eyes. “Bobby, if I could see the lighthouse do you really think I’d be calling you?”

Bobby’s still talking, but the static has picked back up again as Rufus drifts further and further from his last charted position, claps of thunder and the crash of waves drowning out any remaining hint of his words.

“Didn’t catch that, please repeat?” Static. Rufus takes a deep breath, steadying his hands on the wheel. “This is why I never work on the Sabbath,” he mutters.

“—‘s Thursday,” is what Rufus is pretty sure Bobby says.

“Remind me to kick your ass if I live through this.”

“Just give me something to work wi—...—ments, landmarks, anything?”

Rufus squints out the front window; for just a second, he thinks he sees a beam of light moving through the dark sky, but then it’s obscured by something. “I am telling you, Bobby, I don’t see no goddamn—”

_Crash._

The boat shudders and veers sharply sideways with the impact, the wheel slipping out of Rufus’ hands as he’s thrown sideways. By the time he pulls himself to his feet, Walker Blue has stabilised somewhat, but that’s notwithstanding ... _something_ that just put a dent in his deck. Something that was obscuring the lighthouse from view, since there’s now no doubt of the homing beacon shining through the sky up ahead. Small victories.

“Bobby, I think I got hit by something,” he shouts into the radio as he peers out the front window. “Like a piece of rock, or one hell of a big bird, or ...”

A man.

The thing that fell from the sky and crashed into his deck is a man. The rain clouds his vision, but Rufus can clearly see dark clothes, dark hair, two arms and two legs, the whole nine yards. Except there’s an extra yard or so, since two giant pieces of metal appear to have crashed with him. Explains the huge dent in the hull.

Rufus leans out of the shelter, cold October rain pelting his face. “Hey man, you alright?”

Predictably, the man doesn’t move. Why would he, though. He just fell at least seventy feet and hit the deck at full speed. He’s probably ...

“Hey! Can you hear me?” Rufus calls, louder, refusing to believe he’s talking to a corpse. Still no movement. “Damn it,” he mutters, running out into the rain and crouching to check the guy’s pulse. He startles when he finds it beating strong against his frozen fingers.

“Shit.” He flounders for a minute, not having a clue what to do. But an executive decision’s gotta be made. “Know what, if you survived whatever that was, hopefully you can survive a little longer,” he says. “Hang in there, boy.”

The boat doesn’t appear to be taking on water or crumbling under his feet, so Rufus rushes back into the shelter and goes full throttle towards the base of the lighthouse. When the waves even out and the dock is in sight, he could almost cry.

He quickly moors and anchors the boat, heart hammering as he watches his companion’s lips go blue and listens to his breathing get shallower. He grabs the radio again as soon as he’s sure they’re not gonna float away.

“Bobby, this is Walker Blue. I’m docked but I’ve got a guy here who needs help. Can you call somebody?” He lets out a string of choice words when the radio returns nothing but static, despite several attempts. “Figures.”

Fuck. Okay. _Guess we’re doing this_ , he thinks to himself, ducking back out of the shelter to take a closer look at his unexpected passenger. The man is still unconscious, but his heartbeat persists, so Rufus keeps up a running dialogue of mumbled reassurances in case he wakes up. He gets a grip under the guy’s arms and tries to pull him off the scrap metal and towards the cabin, only to find he can’t.

Rufus pulls at the man’s shoulders and the sheets of metal get pulled with him, which is when he comes to a horrifying realisation: The sheets of scrap metal didn’t just fall with him. They’re _attached_ to him. Two sleek, complementary contraptions extending out on either side of him, both bent and damaged. They’re intricately assembled—evidently solid and durable, but far lighter than metal has any right to be, he thinks as he tries to pull the guy closer to the shelter. If he weren’t 99% sure he was hallucinating, he might say they almost look like ...

“Man, those can’t be _wings._ ”

He quickly goes through his options as the rain continues to soak through his clothes. Trying to wake this guy seems unlikely, as neither falling from the sky nor the not-so-dulcet tones of Rufus swearing in his ear have roused him so far. He can’t call anyone until the radio gets reception back, and trying to find help on foot is likely to end in getting lost and dying of hypothermia.

Even if he could get help, who knows what they might wanna do to this poor guy with metal wings hanging off his shoulders. Sure, Rufus is a little scared of him—he fell from the damn sky and barely has a scratch, his skin feels like tire rubber, and he looks like he lost a fight with a welding iron—but for all that he’s no brand of human Rufus has ever seen, he’s still a person.

He doesn’t have a shred of an idea what to do about the wings, but that’s not important. For now, there’s a person here who needs Rufus’ help, and that’s what he’s gonna get.

Careful not to damage the man or the wings any further, Rufus drags him all the way into the cabin where it’s warm and dry. “I’m getting too old for this,” he mutters as he hoists him onto the cot he’s dragged into the centre of the tiny space. Rufus leaves the stranger’s clothes on, draping as many warm blankets as he can find over him instead. He finds a spare towel and dries the man’s hair to the best of his abilities as well.

After checking the radio—still silent—as well as his patient’s pulse again, Rufus pulls up a box beside the cot and collapses onto it. “Take it easy, man,” he consoles, more to himself than anything. His eyes fall on the guy’s head poking out from the blankets.

He takes in the messy dark hair, the sharp lines of his nose and jaw. He looks normal like this, the features relaxed in sleep so incongruous with the metal contraptions crammed on the floor beneath him. Rufus sighs and closes his eyes momentarily. Nothing to do but wait, now.  For the man to wake, for Bobby to reconnect, for the storm to pass, maybe even for him to wake up from this crazy dream.

* * *

“—lo? Walker Blue, you reading this? Damn it, Rufus, do you copy?”

Rufus opens his eyes, blinking hard against the sunlight streaming in through the door. The boat rocks gently under him, soothing despite the harsh ache in his neck and back from sleeping sitting up. It’s quiet outside—the storm has passed, the sun is up, and Rufus is alone in the cabin.

It takes him a second to figure out why that feels wrong. When the sight of the empty cot in the middle of the floor finally clicks, his stomach drops.

“What the hell?”

“Rufus, I swear to God if you don’t pick up I’m sending the damn coast guard—“

“Will you hold your horses, old man,” Rufus snaps into the radio as he scrambles out of the cabin and grabs it off its hook. “I’m fine. Moored up somewhere under the lighthouse. I’ll get your coordinates in a second.”

Bobby tries to sound gruff in reply, but Rufus hears the relief in his voice. “What the hell happened?”

Rufus looks around—at the cabin in disarray, at the wet blankets on the floor, at the chunk of hull missing from the starboard side of his boat.

“Bobby, I wish I knew.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Impala did not exist in 1957 (it was invented in _1958_ , come on), so I gave Dean [this charming lady](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7e5ERY5qWT4/maxresdefault.jpg) to be his Baby for this fic.

“Hey mom,” Dean calls as he walks through the swinging doors of the diner.

Mary takes a moment to set down a few plates in front of some customers before she turns, smiling brilliantly as soon as she catches his eyes. She holds up a finger and gestures to the tables around her, the universal sign for _I’m busy, just a minute_. He nods, knowing full well she’s in the middle of her shift and not wanting to interrupt, and goes to take a seat at the counter. He doesn’t exactly _need_ to talk to her, but he had a shitty day at work and seeing his mom generally never fails to make him smile.

A few minutes later, Mary joins him from behind the counter and gets a new pot of coffee going. “Everything okay?” she asks over the sounds of idle conversation, the click of cutlery on dishes, the creak of the door opening and swinging closed.

“Yeah, ‘course. Work was just a drag and I wanted to see you before I—”

“Mom!”

Both Dean and Mary turn to see Sam darting through the diner. He nearly crashes onto the seat beside Dean.

“Mom, can I have the car for tonight?” Sam asks, out of breath.

Mary shakes her head. “Sorry, Sammy. I’m closing tonight, I’m gonna need it.”

“But I said I’d drive us to dinner!” Sam pouts.

“I’m sure your friends will understand.”

“It’s not my friends, mom, I have a date.”

Dean snorts, earning a glare from Sam. “Oh Sam, you sure do crack me up.”

“Jerk.”

“Be nice, Dean,” Mary says, then turns her attention back to Sam. “Who are you going out with?”

Sam sits up straighter in his chair. “This girl Eileen,” he says, the words tumbling out of him faster than Dean can keep up. “I’ve seen her at the ice cream place after school a few times and she asked me out for dinner at that new diner just outside of town. She’s super pretty and cool and we both like Lord of the Rings and—”

“So, she’s a nerd like you, we get it.” Out of the corner of his eye, Dean sees his mom pointedly busying herself behind the counter, staying out of their sibling squabble. “Why don’t you take her to a movie instead? The theatre’s walking distance from here, and then you can get all cuddled up in the back row, lights down ...”

“She’s deaf. I don’t think she’ll be interested in a movie.”

“Even better. She’s only gotta be interested in you, kiddo,” he leers.

“You’re so gross, Dean.”

“Well she sounds lovely, I’m sure you two will have a great night,” Mary says. “You’re just gonna have to make do without the car.”

“You could always ask to borrow mine, you know,” Dean says.

“I could, but I know you’re gonna say no,” says Sam.

“And that’s why you’re the smart one.”

“Come on, Dean,” Sam implores. “Just this once. Please?”

Dean sighs, joking attitude dissipating. “I promise I would any other time, Sammy, but I told Max that Charlie and I would drive up to his place tonight to pick up some parts for Baby.”

“You wouldn’t have to drive across half the state to get parts every six months if you’d just drive a normal car made in this century like everybody else,” Sam mutters.

“How dare you disgrace her like that.”

“Boys,” Mary snaps. Dean, noticing how loudly he’d spoken, sits back up in his seat, feeling chastised. Sam does the same, looking at the counter. “I’m at work, and I love seeing you both, but I’ve gotta get back to the actual paying customers. Besides, Dean, you better get going if you wanna be on the highway before it gets dark.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Dean admits. He knows Mary works long hours trying to make ends meet as well as save up for law school for Sam, even if it is a lot easier now that a decent amount of Dean’s salary from the garage goes towards the same purpose. Just because he and Sam never miss an opportunity to mess with each other doesn’t mean they can make her look bad at work.  He stands up and leans over the counter to kiss his mom’s cheek before heading out. “Love you.”

“Love you,” she echoes. “And Sam, I’m really sorry, but I’m sure Eileen will understand if you have to go somewhere closer for dinner.”

“I guess,” Sam replies dejectedly, leaning in as Mary reaches over to kiss his cheek too.

“Shouldn’t you be off soon if you’re meeting for dinner?”

Sam shakes his head. “Not ‘til 7:00. I thought I could just do some homework here while I wait.”

“Of course, sweetie, as long as it’s quiet,” Mary says, shooting both of them one last smile before picking up the coffee pot and heading off to do her rounds.

Dean ruffles Sam’s hair, nearly getting whacked in the face as Sam reaches up to push him away. “I’m gonna split, see you later tonight.”

“See you,” Sam replies.

Dean calls back one last time, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

“That’s terrible advice!” Sam replies.

Dean smirks as he digs into his pocket for the keys to his gorgeous 1946 Chevrolet Coupe. Sure, Sam (and all his friends) may tease him for calling such an old car his own, but sue him, he’s attached now. Linda has told half a dozen times she’d happily give him a great deal if he wanted to fix up a newer model from the junkyard, but Dean’ll keep turning her down until the day Baby won’t drive another mile.

Before he can reach the swinging doors, he gets distracted by a commotion at one of the tables in the corner and slows down. Seeing Rufus Turner, an old family friend, he stops completely and listens to what the men at the table across from his are laughing at.

“For the last time, I’m telling you,” Rufus says insistently, despite the prominent bags under his eyes. “I didn’t hit nothing. A man fell out of the sky and hit _me!_ ”

“Sure it wasn’t just whiskey that hit you too hard, Rufus?” one of the guys sneers. Dean already doesn’t like him. “Sounds like it to me.”

“If I’d been drinking, you think I’d be able to moor my boat up perfectly in winds like that?”

“Thought you said there was a huge chunk missing this morning,” another guy chimes in.

Rufus takes a deep breath. “That’s because a hunk of metal fell from outer space and took a piece of my boat to the bottom of the bay with it!”

“First, it’s a man, now it’s metal? Don’t worry about it, Rufus, we won’t tell anybody if you just admit you keep some of the good stuff stowed in your cabin for the slow days. We’ve all been there, ain’t we, boys?”

Dean’s already heard enough. He’s about to cut in, but before he can, he sees Rufus’ husband Bobby making a beeline for their table. He’s got two mugs of coffee clutched in a white-knuckled grip.

“Hey, you sorry saps. I believe him,” he says, coffee sloshing onto the table as he slams the mugs down. “I saw it, too.”

“Bobby, please, no one needs convincing that _you_ keep a bottle stashed in the case under your dispatch radio.”

“Pfft,” Bobby grunts, throwing some money onto the table to cover his meal. “Y’all ain’t worth my time. Let’s beat it, Rufus.”

Rufus is out of the diner faster than Dean can shake himself out of his stupor. Bobby’s still moseying towards the door, though, and Dean quickens his pace to catch up.

“Hey, Bobby,” Dean greets as he places a hand on his shoulder in greeting. “What’s this fuss about?”

“Rufus’ fishing boat got caught in the storm last night,” Bobby explains. “Lost radio contact for a while, didn’t get it back ‘till he’d washed up on the beach, dent bigger than Texas in the hull.”

Dean whistles. “He alright?”

“Far as I know, yeah.” Bobby shuffles a bit, as though he’s not sure how much to divulge. “Sure does believe he saw some kind of monster out there, though. Won’t stop going off about those damned ‘metal wings,’ or whatever.”

Dean nods, looking at Bobby steadily. “Yeah, sounds a little out there, but I mean ...” He clears his throat. “You believe him?”

Bobby sighs, plucking his keyring out of his pocket and flipping through it intently. “Boy, I didn’t believe the Russians would put a satellite over our heads, and yet here we are. Sure, a metal man sounds bonkers, but Rufus ain’t one to make up stories, not like this. World’s changing and I don’t know what to believe, so I stick to believing my loved ones.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, Bobby’s words running circles in his head. “Sorry to bother you, man.”

“No bother. Didn’t get a chance to say hi to your mom—do that for me, will you?”

“You got it,” Dean says, smiling. “Say hi to Rufus when he’s feeling better.”

“Bye, Dean.”


	3. Chapter 3

Sam has gone to the free ASL classes offered at the community centre for almost a year and has doubled down on practising it in his own time in the months since he’s met Eileen. But even though the two of them have had a handful of easy conversations before (save the first time they’d met, when he’d accidentally signed “fuck you” where he meant “thank you” and she’d nearly clocked him in the face before he’d realised his mistake and hastily apologised), Sam feels his palms sweating through every sign he makes, not wanting to mess up or make her work harder than she has to reading his lips.

Of course, he tells himself, a good part of the nerves probably just stems from the fact that he’s been into Eileen for at least a couple months now, and finally being on a date with her is exhilarating, to say the least.

He likes her smile, and her laugh, and her sense of humour, and the little smirk on her face when she manages to make Sam flustered, and the fact that they both like the same kind of ice cream in their sundaes. She doesn’t care at all that he can’t take her to a nicer restaurant and says she’s been craving fries from her favourite diner anyway.

Sam buys a giant pretzel from a beachside vendor on their way out, and they pass it back and forth, one of them signing and the other eating as they wander around the neighbourhood. It’s a nice, cool night, the sky clear and full of stars, but Sam spends most of the walk looking at Eileen instead.

He’s about to suggest they head back to the car when Eileen suddenly stops. He follows her eyes towards the treeline, thick with conifers and oaks with orange leaves. The border isn’t uniform, though—something has obviously disturbed these trees, knocked off a few branches and bent a few trunks, carving a jagged path into the forest and towards the mountain.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Eileen asks, a conspiratorial smile on her face.

Sam stares at her. “... No?”

“Come on, let’s follow the trail,” Eileen says.

Sam hesitates. “I don’t know ... It’s pretty dark, and I didn’t bring a flashlight or anything.” He flounders searching for the sign for flashlight and ends up spelling it, but not before Eileen laughs at his nervous hand movements.

“It’s not _that_ dark, I can see fine,” she assures him. “What, are you scared?”

“No,” Sam insists. Eileen raises an eyebrow at him. “I just, uh, don’t wanna get lost.”

Eileen snorts. “I’ve lived here forever; I know my way around.” She grins at him. “Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Aren’t I supposed to say that?”

“No, you’re not,” she replies, and with that she takes off, leaving Sam no choice but to follow.

As he suspected, it gets even darker once they venture further into the trees. The wind picks up the brown, crinkly leaves covering the ground, making Sam twitch with each new noise. For all her bluster, Eileen slows down a bit as the night stretches on, too.

“We can go back,” he offers a couple times, stepping in front of her so she can see him sign as he speaks.

“Just up to that next tree,” she replies each time, and they continue for another fifteen.

Just as Sam is about to suggest for the third time that they start heading back to town, Eileen stops in her tracks so suddenly that it makes Sam jump.

“What is it?” he asks.

“There,” Eileen says, pointing down a dirt road crossing their path, past a small shack that might have been a hunting cabin once upon a time. Night has long since fallen, and it’s only because his eyes have already adjusted that Sam can see what she’s pointing at: a bunch of trees lining the road are cut up, some even fallen or leaning on others precariously. It looks as though someone threw a handful of sawblades into the forest, leaving streaks of exposed wood under the bark.

Eileen leans in and looks at him, eyebrows raised. “What do you think it is?” she asks.

“A bunch of angry carpenters?” Sam offers, spelling out the last word and earning an eyeroll for his efforts. “Where does this road go, anyway? Assuming we’re following this thing the right way.”

“To the power station,” Eileen replies. She grins wickedly. “Maybe whatever we’re following is going to eat it!”

Sam looks at her blankly. “Very funny.”

She shrugs. “Still want to go back?”

“No way,” Sam says. “You dragged us this far, I’m seeing this through. I wanna see the look on your face when it turns out to just be a beaver or something.”

It’s her turn to look unimpressed. “A beaver that could tear up a road?”

“Just come on,” Sam says, grabbing her hand. Realising what he just did, he blushes and almost lets go. She simply grins and holds on tighter as they head down towards the power station together.

Sure enough, the further down the road they go, the stranger clues they find. More shredded tree trunks. Huge gashes in the dirt, as though something big and heavy got dragged through it. The sign for the _ROCKWELL ELECTRICAL POWER AND SUB-STATION_ has been pulled out of the ground, the metal dented, the paint coming off. Between himself and Eileen, Sam can’t tell which of them is holding the other’s hand more tightly.

Normally, a metal fence prevents trespassers from walking into the substation, but a short sneak around the perimeter reveals both that there are no workers in sight and that a part of the gate has been crushed.

They step cautiously around the torn fencing, still clutching each other’s hands.

Eileen speaks first, voice trembling. “I don’t think we should go in there.”

“What?” Sam says, forgetting for a moment to let go of her hand and sign as he talks. “It was your idea to come all this way!”

“Well, I didn’t think we were gonna find—”

Sam jumps as Eileen is interrupted by a loud creaking noise that’s followed by something that sounds like a choked off, pained moan reverberating off metal. Eileen seems to feel it rumble through the ground—she turns to look at Sam just as he does at her, both their eyes wide.

_Come on, over here,_ Eileen signs quickly, grabbing Sam’s hand and pulling him away from the substation, into the cover of the trees.

 _What was that?_ Sam signs once they’re hidden in a dense cluster of old maples, no longer talking so their voices don’t give them away.

 _I don’t know_ , Eileen replies, hands trembling.

The sound of metal creaking, bending, and tearing rips through the air again, shaking the whole substation. They both start, clutching each other’s hands once again as something—someone—lurches into view.

A man moves through the substation, clutching at the breakers and transformers for support. He looks like he went a few rounds with a thunderstorm and lost, hair in disarray, clothes unkempt, face fixed in dark concentration, pulling himself along as though a physical weight is dragging him down. As Sam watches, he steadies himself, reaches up, grabs one of the locked panels on the breaker, and yanks it free with his bare hands.

Sam’s about ready to book it and find the police, Dean, _someone,_ before this guy can hurt himself or anyone else—he doesn’t know what might need access to direct current from the powerlines and doesn’t wanna find out. Curiously, the man doesn’t seem interested in the circuit, but rather the panel he ripped free. He holds it in front of his face, where Sam can just make out a frown. He watches with wide eyes as the stranger twists and bends the panel into more of a triangular shape using only his fingers. Once satisfied, he pivots, looking at the giant hunks of metal hanging behind himself. Sam had assumed they were just junk scattered on the ground, but now they appear to be moving, lifting towards the man as he reaches back to hold his newly-created piece up to one of them.

The movement makes his face twist into grimace, and his mouth opens to let out a pained sound—one like scraping rust off metal, but still undeniably human. It’s the human part that pulls at Sam’s heartstrings, makes him step forward even as his brain pounds in his skull and warning lights go off behind his eyes, and shout, “Are you okay?”

Wrong decision. The man’s head spins to look Sam dead in the eye, and it’s hard to say which of them is more scared. But whereas Sam is frozen in shock, the man startles violently. Before Sam even knows what’s happened, the two metal contraptions—dead weight until now—unfold and swoop up and down.

They’re wings, and they send the man hurtling above their heads—and directly towards a current transformer.

“Look out!” Eileen shouts.

It’s too late. On the downward flex, the left wing contraption slams into the transformer cylinder, and that rough, guttural sound peals through the air again as the full voltage of the power station courses through the man’s wing and into his body.

Sam stands frozen only for a second, watching in terror as the wings flap wildly trying to get free. Instead, they only become more tangled in the power lines.

Eileen grabs his arm, jarring him back to the real world.

“Come on,” she yells over the man’s persistent screams, “help me find the shutdown switch!”

They sprint towards the control building, and Sam’s eyes fall immediately on the heavy cut-off switch affixed to the side of the building, warning labels peppering the wall around it. Without hesitation, he grabs it with both hands and pulls, only he can’t quite get it—

Eileen’s hands cover his on the handle and together they slam the switch down.

All at once, the lights go off, the hum of voltage through the station ceases completely, the man’s screams cut off, and the whole forest falls silent.

After taking a minute to catch his breath, Sam clears his throat.

“Are you okay?” he asks, half-heartedly signing from where he’s fallen to the ground.

Eileen nods, still looking pale. Sam is about to sign something else when Eileen catches his hand in hers, her way of telling him to shut up. He’s happy to, the two of them sitting there on the ground, bodies shaking as they try to process what just happened.

Another moment passes.

“We should check if he’s okay,” Eileen suggests.

Sam nods, pulling himself to his feet with Herculean effort and extending a hand to help Eileen stand as well.

No longer paralyzed by the current, the man has fallen to the ground, though a few “feathers” of his left wing remain hooked on the transformer and the power lines. Eileen climbs up to gingerly untangle the wing while Sam reaches down to check for a pulse. The man’s skin feels strange—possibly an effect of the electrocution—but miraculously, a pulse beats away under his fingers.

That’s about all the good news, though. A dark, fibrous burn curls out from under his shirt, up the left side of his neck and onto his cheek. He’s also completely unconscious, and no amount of noise Sam and Eileen make do anything to change that.  

“What do we do?” Eileen asks once the wing is settled, mangled as it is, back on the ground.

“We can’t just leave him here,” Sam says, hesitantly.

“We can’t exactly go call the police, Sam.” Eileen’s tone betrays the nerves behind the snappish comment. “What would we say?”

“I know, you’re right.” Sam looks around, telling himself to think. “We have to get him out of here—if the power’s out it won’t be long before someone shows up here to investigate. Can you help me drag him to the hunting cabin?”

The wood cabin isn’t very far back at all, but getting the man there, wings and all, is another matter entirely. After a bit of scavenging, Eileen digs up a big tarp. They hoist him onto it and drag him back down the dirt road, the world pitch black around them.

Sam’s muscles ache and he feels like he could sleep for a week by the time they find the key to the cabin buried under a woodpile and get the man settled inside. It’s fairly sparse, but it’s also secluded and spacious enough for his wings to fit in comfortably. Sam promises to himself he’ll come back and check tomorrow, as soon as he wakes up.

They lock the door behind them and spend a minute just looking at the shack, both still out of breath, one of Sam’s arms draped over Eileen’s shoulders.

“So, is this how you expected our first date to go?” Eileen asks.

Sam laughs. “The town-wide power outage was a surprise.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You’re up early,” Dean calls as he descends the last couple stairs.

Sam inhales sharply and drops his butter knife as he spins around. “Dean! What are you doing up?”

“Woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. And I asked you first.”

“I, uh ...” Sam stammers, looking around. “I was hungry?”

Dean nods to the counter, where a tuna sandwich lies beside the peanut butter and jelly one Sam is currently assembling. “I can see that.” He frowns. “Don’t they serve lunch at school?”

“Yeah, but I was just—I mean, I thought—” Sam’s alternating between staring at Dean and looking anywhere but at him.

“Jeez, Sam, this isn’t an interrogation, I was just wondering.” Dean keeps an eye on him as he goes to get the coffee started. “What’s gotten into you? First you decide to get lost in the forest at night, now you can’t form sentences?”

Dean was mostly joking, but seeing the way Sam clams up, wringing his hands together and hunching his shoulders the way he always does when he’s nervous—or guilty—makes him pause.

“Hey, man, if it’s something serious, you know I’ve got your back no matter—”

“I think I need help,” Sam explains, still fidgeting. “But I can’t really explain. You won’t believe me. You need to come see it.”

Dean’s eyebrows pull together as the coffee beans grind. “See what? ‘Cause I can help with most things, but if it’s a rash, you know you gotta see a doctor about—”

Sam makes a face. “No, just ... do you have time before work? Can we take your car?”

“You know, you’re really starting to worry me here. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sam assures him. “I just need you to trust me.”

Dean levels a look at him for a long moment, trying to decipher the hesitation and nerves and concern in Sam’s eyes. “Alright, give me a few minutes, I’ll get packed for work and we can go. Where are we going, exactly?”

It turns out they’re going to the outskirts of Rockwell. Sam fidgets the whole way through, even though Dean keeps the radio on, The Five Stars and Jimmy Haskell crooning doo-wop and rock’n’roll tunes about atomic bombs and life in the stars—all anyone seems to talk about these days—to lighten the mood. Despite Dean’s best attempts to sing along or engage Sam in small talk, his brother just keeps his eyes glued somberly ahead.

He doesn’t say anything except to direct Dean to turn here and stop there, right in front of a wooden building he might generously describe as a cabin. Nevertheless, Dean pulls the car up alongside it, sparing a moment to gingerly pet Baby’s steering wheel in an apology for dragging her down this dilapidated dirt-and-loose-gravel road.

“Alright,” he says, climbing out of the car. “What did you wanna show me?”

“It’s a bit of a long story,” Sam begins. “Um. I’ll explain as we go. For now, just ... please don’t be mad? We were just trying to help.”

With that perplexing statement, he pulls a key out of his pocket and unlocks the door. It creaks open and Sam steps inside, leaving Dean to follow.

Dean doesn’t know what he’s been expecting all morning, but it definitely wasn’t this. Not a full-grown man, sprawled unconscious on the floor of an abandoned shack on top of a pile of scrap metal.

“Sam,” Dean says. He opens and closes his mouth a couple times, unsure what to say.

“I said please don’t be mad,” Sam reminds him.

“Mad? Why would I be mad? Is he okay? What happened?” Sam’s words sink in belatedly. “Unless you’re saying ... _you_...?”

“No!” Sam interjects quickly, fixing Dean with pleading eyes. “Or not really. We startled him, it was an accident, we were just watching, and we got scared, and he hit one of the transformers and got electrocuted and he was really badly hurt, but we couldn’t—”

Dean looks at him incredulously. “Couldn’t what? Call for help?”

Sam shakes his head. “No, Dean, we couldn’t, because it’s not just the guy, it’s also the wings.”

At the word _wings_ , the whole picture suddenly comes together. What Dean thought were just pieces of scrap are in fact big, intricately-assembled pieces of metal. A scaffold along the top of each wing seems to serve as a bone. They’re folded up to fit in the small room, but fully extended, Dean would put the wingspan at twenty feet across. There are gears and hydraulics at the joints, and tons of gleaming and deadly-sharp metal feathers extend down from the scaffold, pieces missing in some spots, bent and mangled in others.

They’re gorgeous. They’re terrifying.

“Oh,” Dean says.

“He looked really hurt,” Sam explains. “I tried to ask if he needed help, but he got scared and took off. He _flew_ , Dean. But then he hit the power lines and got hurt, and we couldn’t just leave him there.” Sam frowns, kneeling closer to the man’s head. He appears to be breathing but is otherwise motionless. “Huh,” Sam murmurs to himself. “He had burns all up his neck, but now I can’t see anything ...”

“You couldn’t leave him?” Dean asks once he finally finds his voice, worry and paranoia bubbling up in his throat. He ignores the bit about the burns—the guy looks fine now. “Sam, he could be dangerous. He could be _Russian._ You don’t know where he came from or what he’s here for!”

“Neither do you,” Sam points out. “He may be dangerous, but he’s still a person, Dean. He was hurt and scared.  If I called 9-1-1 or anyone else, they’d just lock him up. But I don’t think he wants to hurt anyone. I think he was trying to fix his wings, not break the power station. What was I supposed to do?”

Dean’s head hurts, and his ribcage feels tight around his lungs. But Sam is looking at him with those pleading puppy dog eyes, and as Dean looks over the strange man once again, lying unconscious and injured on the floor of a run-down shack, he can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, he might have done the same thing in Sam’s place.

He reaches over and puts a hand on Sam’s shoulder, sighing heavily as they both look down at the man with the metal wings. “It’s okay, Sammy. We can—we’ll figure it out.”

Sam shifts under his hand. “I’m sorry, Dean. We were just messing around and wanted to see what was making all those tracks in the trees and the road, we didn’t think—”

“I know you didn’t,” Dean snaps, more out of stress than actual malice. He immediately feels bad about it as Sam hunches his shoulders. Sam is usually so level-headed and smart; it’s easy to forget that for all that he’s already surpassed Dean in height, he’s still just a kid. He and Eileen tried to handle this situation as best as they could, and Sam’s clearly helplessly guilty and scared. Dean should probably cut him some slack. He takes a deep breath. “Sorry. You still shouldn’t have been wandering in the woods alone, but I know you didn’t mean to get tangled up in this. And you probably saved this guy’s life, whoever—whatever—he is, so, you know. You did alright. I’m here now, it’ll be okay.”

“Thanks, Dean,” Sam says, visibly relaxing for the first time all morning.

Dean clears his throat, ready to change the subject. “You said he got electrocuted? He looks fine to me.”

“Yeah, and I thought he had electrical burns, too, but they’re all gone now. I don’t know, maybe I imagined that part.”

“Maybe.” Dean idly rubs the back of his neck, checks his watch. Then he registers the time. “Shit. I gotta get to work. And you have to get to school.”

“We can’t just leave him here,” Sam says.

Dean hums. “You said this cabin was abandoned?”

They lock the door behind them, opting to leave the man there for now and come back after work and school. Sam leaves both the sandwiches on a small chair near the guy’s feet, as well as a bottle of water from his backpack. They reluctantly climb back into Baby and spend the drive back into town in silence.

It’s only when Dean pulls up by the high school that Sam puts a hand on his arm and looks at him seriously. “Please don’t tell mom,” he begs. “Not yet? I don’t want her to be worried.”

Dean nods reluctantly. “Okay. Not yet. I’ll be round at five, okay?”

* * *

At work, Dean tries to focus on oil changes and tire rotations for the 1955 Cadillac someone brought in this morning, but he knows he’s distracted. He keeps losing track of what song’s playing on the radio and even forgets how many tires he’s already changed. He can’t keep the image of the winged man out of his head.

It’s almost lunchtime when Dean finally remembers what Rufus and Bobby had said in the diner and starts putting the pieces together. Shit, this was probably the guy Rufus was talking about. He remembers him mentioning the damage to his hull wonders if that’s where some of the dents and bends in the wings came from.

He finds it a little worrying how quickly he’s come to accept the word “wings” as part of his vocabulary concerning this guy, but he’s too busy freaking out about at least ten other things for that to really faze him.

Linda keeps a close eye on him all day. Her gaze is always unsettlingly sharp and discerning—Dean generally feels like she can see straight through to his soul, and as such would never even try to lie to her—but today she seems especially attentive. Sure enough, at lunchtime she gently insists that he take a break and ushers him into the house next door. She serves him a glass of water and a bowl of fruit salad. He grumbles at the choice of snack, pushing some grapes around before stabbing one with more force than necessary.

“Alright, out with it,” she says, taking a seat. She crooks an eyebrow at him.

Dean swallows. “Out with what? I’m fine.”

“And I’m the president. What’s eating you?”

“Nothing, just didn’t sleep well,” Dean says—convincingly, if you ask him. Linda’s gaze doesn’t waver even as she eats. He sighs, trying to craft an excuse as he chews to buy some time. “That, and, uh. Just worried about Sam. We were talking last night, and he’s fine, he’s just stressed out about finishing high school and getting into college, and not sure if this girl likes him back. You know the drill. I think the stress is just rubbing off on me.” That’s all safe to say. None of it is technically a lie, anyway.

Linda’s eyes soften. “He’s a smart kid, Dean. He’s got his head on straight and he’s got you looking out for him. He’ll be fine. You both will.”

“Yeah.” Dean shoves a chunk of cantaloupe into his mouth to cover the silence. He knows Linda couldn’t possibly know about what’s really worrying him vis-à-vis himself and Sam, but he takes comfort in the words anyway.

The end of the day can’t come soon enough, and he barely remembers to say goodbye before he splits to grab Sam from school. Sam explains he saw Eileen at lunch and though she wanted to come along, she had an appointment out of town. Dean privately thinks the less people there, the better.

* * *

The man is awake when Sam and Dean open the cabin door.

Sam yelps and Dean jumps back, throwing an arm out in front of Sam protectively, heart racing.

The man stands up straighter, wings extending as much as possible in the confined space, carving away chunks of wood where they collide with the walls. He can’t be much shorter than Dean, but his stiff posture makes him seem imposing nonetheless. His wings, the texture of his skin, and even the colour of his eyes are all unnatural, but his terrified expression is nothing but human.

“Hey, hey, relax, we’re not here to hurt you.” Dean holds up his free hand.

The man’s wings, battered and bent as they are, twitch again. The fear in his eyes still betrays his offensive pose, though. Dean lets his hand fall back down slowly. No sudden movements.

“I promise—look, we’re unarmed, we’re not dangerous—”

“And we don’t think you are either,” Sam interjects.

“—We just want to talk. So, you can put the ... wings ... down.” Somehow saying it out loud makes it real in a way thinking the word all day hasn’t.

The man rapidly glances back and forth between Sam and Dean, breathing heavily.

Sam steps forward, forcing Dean to drop his other arm. “I’m Sam, and this is my brother Dean. My friend Eileen and I, we followed all the tracks in the forest to the power station. And the bent fence ... that was you too, right?”

The man just stares, eyes narrowing.

“Do you know if he even speaks English?” Dean asks Sam quietly. The man’s eyes follow Dean as he leans over. Dean clears his throat. “Um. Do you speak English?”

“Can you understand us at all?” Sam asks. He takes another step closer, more slowly this time. “We just want you to know you’re okay. We’re not gonna hurt you.” He frowns for a second, then points to the man, following the gesture with another hand motion. Dean realises he’s signing. “You’re safe.”

Blue eyes watch Sam’s hands, then flick back up to his face, then to Dean’s. Dean feels a chill run down his spine at the intense gaze. His eyes are so bright they look synthetic, but they’re nonetheless full of emotion.

Very slowly, the man lowers his wings and tucks them in behind his back.

Both Sam and Dean let out a sigh of relief. Dean supposes it’s a completely inappropriate time to chuckle a little hysterically under his breath as he notices the PB&J sandwich is gone, whereas the tuna sandwich has been thrown into a corner. Apparently even possibly-Russian spy-robot-aliens have good taste.

“How do you control those?” Sam asks as the man continues to stare. “Where did you get them? Where did you come from? Did you fly here? What happened to your—”

“Sam,” Dean says. He looks pointedly at the man, and then back at Sam, who hunches a little as his mouth snaps shut. “We don’t even know if he can understand us, and even if he can, let the guy breathe. Start with something simple, like ...” He thinks for a second, then turns back to the man, who’s watching their interaction with interest. “Do you have a name?”

The man tilts his head ever so slightly. He looks down, as though he’s thinking about it.

“You do understand us,” Dean says. It’s not a question.

Apprehension back in his eyes, the man nods slowly, once.

“Yes, you understand, or yes, you have a name?” Dean asks.

His brow furrows. He’s thinking, Dean realises. His voice, when he finally opens his mouth, is like stone being dragged over metal, like opening the hood of a rusted car, like static from a radio.

“Castiel,” he says. “My name is Castiel.”


	5. Chapter 5

One of Mary’s coworkers is out sick, so she ends up working more hours than usual. It makes it easier for Dean and Sam to sneak around, driving out to see Castiel and bring him food at least once a day. But Mary still has days off. To allay suspicion, they take turns, inventing cover stories for each other and picking up extra bread, peanut butter, and jam at the grocery store when one of them is nearby.

Dean feels bad keeping things from his mom. He knows she would probably come around quickly if she knew the whole story and met Castiel for herself. It’s just the whole thing sounds so unbelievable. Besides, Mary has enough on her plate without having to worry about a human-robot-hybrid and any possible harm he might do to her kids.

So, for now, figuring out what to do with Castiel is up to the two of them.

* * *

“So, Castiel. Uh. Where are you from?”

Dean looks at Sam. “Really? That’s your opener?”

“You said to slow down!”

“I think we’re a little past ‘new kid in school’ questions, at least.”

“Then what do you wanna know?”

Dean opens his mouth. Closes it. Shifts his attention from Sam to Castiel. “Fine. Where are you from, Castiel?”

Castiel frowns and is quiet for a long time. “I don’t know.”

“Fantastic,” Dean sighs.

“How did you get here?” Sam asks, forging forward.

Another frown. “I was unconscious. Presumably you brought me here.”

“No, but I mean ... how did you get _here_? Like, to Rockwell?”

“What is ‘Rockwell’?” Castiel asks, and Dean can almost hear the quotation marks in his voice.

“Rockwell is ... here,” Sam says lamely. “This town, where we live and where you are now. But what I meant was—”

Castiel holds up a hand. “I understand your intent. Once again, I must answer that I do not know.”

It’s Dean’s turn to frown. “Don’t you?” Sam and Castiel look at him blankly. “I mean, _I_ can at least guess. Rufus was saying someone fell out of the sky and hit his boat. Someone with wings. That was you, wasn’t it?”

Castiel looks deep in thought for a moment, fingers rubbing his temple. “Yes. I did not recall, but now I do. Most of it, at least.”

“How come there’s so much you don’t remember?” Sam says.

The question looks like it distresses Castiel, and his hand flits back to his head, seemingly unconsciously. Dean narrows his eyes and leans forward, only for Castiel to jerk and draw back.

Dean throws up his hands. “Relax, I’m not gonna hurt you. I just wanna see.” With Castiel’s eyes fixed on him, he carefully reaches out and lifts Castiel’s hand away from his head. Sure enough, there’s a significant dent in his temple. It looks like it ought to be bruised or bleeding, but Castiel seems shocked to find it’s even there.

“What is that?” Sam asks.

“I think it’s why he can’t remember anything,” Dean replies, leaning back again. Castiel reaches his hand back up where Dean was touching a moment ago, prodding the spot more intently now.

“Did … did someone do this to me?” Castiel asks. Dean feels a pang in his chest at how small his voice sounds despite the gravelly, creaking tone.

“It probably just happened when you fell,” Dean assures him, trying to quiet Castiel’s worries. It seems impossible that a robot should even _have_ worries, but here Castiel is, made of metal and polymers and yet proving he has a human enough heart. Even if he’s a foreign agent or someone sent here to hurt them, he’s not in any condition to do so right now. Right now, he’s just a person who needs a bit of kindness and reassurance. It gives Dean the confidence to add, “Even if someone is coming for you, Cas, we’ll keep you safe.”

Castiel is still frowning, but he nods.

His hand doesn’t drift far from his temple for the rest of the evening.

* * *

Some days the conversations are more engaging than others. Even with the gaps in Castiel’s memory, they manage to piece together a few things:

No, he doesn’t know why he has wings. He’s had them for as long as he can remember. They are, indeed, made of metal—steel at first glance, but a closer investigation reveals the material is much lighter and more resilient than anything Dean’s encountered in his mechanical work. The ‘feathers’ are perfectly formed and knife-sharp. Castiel looks like a man wielding a constant weapon, even with the dents and pieces missing.

This brings them to the second revelation, which is the reason why Castiel was tearing apart the power station.

“You’re trying to fix them?” Dean ventures.

“Yes,” Castiel says, shaking his wings out a bit to demonstrate. The way the feathers fit together is mesmerising in the morning sun shining through the small windows, but there are obvious gaps and bends that don’t belong. “I calculated my best chance for survival was to repair the damage and take flight again, to see if I could retrace my steps.”

“You can _fly_ for real?” Sam smiles ear to ear, and it makes Dean grin a little, too, even as the thought of flying makes him nauseous.

Castiel gives Sam a wry look. “Yes. Flying is what usually precedes falling and crashing, correct?”

Dean stares at him. “Was ... that a joke?”

“No,” Castiel replies, completely straight-faced. It’s said with such offense that Dean cracks up anyway.

* * *

Dean tries to break the ice a little more with each visit. He likes to open with simple, easy questions.

“Are you a spy?”

Silence.

“Like, for the Russians?”

More silence.

Dean sighs. “Do you even know what a spy is?”

Castiel frowns at him. “Why do you keep asking me questions?”

“Uh, because you’re a guy with giant fucking metal wings who fell out of the sky and accidentally turned off the power to an entire town?” Dean rolls his shoulders. “It’s pretty weird.”

“ _You_ are weird,” Castiel says. “To me.”

“I’m gonna take a swing and say there are probably more people without metal contraptions embedded in their backs than with,” Dean ventures.

Castiel frowns some more. “You are ... not the first people without wings I have encountered,” he says carefully.

That gets Dean’s attention. “Does that mean there are others like you? With wings?”

“I ...” Castiel rubs at the dent in his temple, as though he might break through to the memories he seems to be looking for. “I don’t know. I only know there were other people.”

“Where?” Dean prods.

Cas huffs, sending a glare Dean’s way. “If I knew, I would say.”

“Alright, sorry.” Dean throws his hands up.

But then he looks back at Castiel. The guy is hugging his legs close to his chest, and it may be a defensive move, but it makes him look vulnerable. Dean’s annoyance simmers down. Cas didn’t ask for any of this, didn’t ask to be interrogated or isolated in the woods in a part of the world he doesn’t seem to recognise at all. In between these bouts of frustration and annoyance, Cas’ primary state seems to be nothing but fear.

“Sorry,” he repeats. Cas doesn’t react, chin still resting on his knees. “I’m letting my curiosity get the best of me, so I keep forgetting this is probably scarier for you than it is for me. I’ll keep the burning questions to a minimum, okay?”

Cas finally meets his eyes, body uncurling a bit, and nods. “Thank you.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes.

“These people ... I think they talked to me,” Cas says, startling Dean. “Told me to do things. Made me do things. Forced me to stay in one place.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t like it.”

Dean hums. “Nobody likes being told what to do. I guess not being around whoever that was might be one good thing to come out of this whole situation.”

“You don’t allow me to leave either,” Cas says, a bit of bitterness creeping into his tone.

Dean frowns. “I’m ... we’re not trying to trap you here. This is just what I think will keep you safest. But I won’t force you to stay, or talk to me, or do anything. You’re free to do whatever you want, really.”

Castiel seems to consider this for a long time. So long that Dean starts thinking Cas is about to get up and leave.

“Thank you for letting me know,” Cas says finally. “I think I would like to stay here for now.”

Dean smiles at him, and Cas almost smiles back, the corner of his mouth quirking up slightly.

* * *

Things are easier after that. Less tense.

“Hey Cas,” Dean calls, lifting the latch with his knee and pushing the door in with his foot. The sun has already gone down, but his warm leather coat keeps the autumn breeze from chilling him too much. He wonders if Cas gets cold at all. He hasn’t demonstrated any discomfort or seemed unhappy with the ugly trench coat and old long-sleeved shirts and jeans Dean scrounged up for him, though, so Dean puts a pin in that for now. “Sam and I have some family coming down the next few days and we might not be able to get up to see you. So, I present: entertainment.”

He unceremoniously drops the picnic cooler on the ground, rattling the pile of books and comics on top in the process. Castiel shuffles over and picks up a Superman comic, peering at it intensely.

“And food,” Dean adds as an afterthought, moving the rest of the books and opening the cooler.

Castiel is a weird guy, so it’s not like it had been a surprise to find that the weirdness extended to his food tastes. They learned on day one that he loves PB&J sandwiches but hates tuna. Since then, Sam and Dean have brought him all sorts of foods to taste, since Castiel never tells them he wants anything in particular. He likes cheese alone or on burgers but not on crackers, though crackers are good on their own. He likes coffee, black with sugar, but only before mid-afternoon. He adores strawberry milkshakes but hates anything with banana. Sandwiches and fruit and bottles of water fill the picnic cooler for now.

“These are ... manuals?” Castiel asks, fixated on the comic in his hands. He delicately turns the pages, scanning each one.

Dean reaches out to stop his hand. “Slow down, you gotta read it front to back, no spoiling the ending _.”_ He flips back to the cover. “And no, it’s a comic. Like a book, but less words since the pictures tell the story for you. If you want real books, I brought some of mine and Sam’s favourites, but I didn’t know if you could read English well enough, so these were a safer bet. My friend Charlie got me into them a while ago, so I’m just passing them forward.”

Castiel nods. “Who is this man?” he asks, pointing to the cover and looking straight into Dean’s eyes, like the answer is of utmost importance.

“Superman. He’s a superhero. But like, _the_ superhero. The first one for real, anyway. Not the coolest, though. That’s Batman. I brought some of his books, too—”

“What does he do?”

Dean shrugs. “Flies around, fights crime, helps people. Little simplistic I guess, but that’s what heroes do.”

“He doesn’t have wings to fly,” Cas points out.

“He has superpowers, dummy,” Dean says. Cas looks unimpressed at the nickname. “It’s because on Krypton ... look, you have to read to find out. That’s the point.”

Dean comes with Sam four days later. A couple of the books have moved, but all the comics now lay around Cas on the floor. To Dean’s dismay, the Batman ones appear to be on the bottom of a pile. By comparison, the Superman comics are strewn closest to him and look well-loved, as if Cas read them each multiple times.

He looks up from the one he’s reading now, fixing Dean with that intense and imploring blue stare, and Dean knows he won’t be able to say no to what comes next.

“Do you have more of these _Superman_ comics?”

* * *

It’s a beautiful day as Dean rolls down the dirt-packed road to Castiel’s hideaway cabin, the guitar from some new song by The Penguins twanging on the radio and two strawberry milkshakes in the cup holders. The sun is out and casting gorgeous warm colours off the changing and falling leaves. It’s an idyllic afternoon drive, which is probably why things go to shit before he even gets to the cabin.

He’s squinting ahead and wondering if the door is actually open or if he’s just imagining things when he sees a flash of silver poke out from the ground off to his left. Silver just like the metal of Castiel’s wings.

Dean slams on the breaks.

“Cas?” he says carefully, pulling Baby off the road and out of sight before climbing out of the car. Sure enough, Castiel is lying in the dirt with his wing-contraptions twisted and bent behind him, covered in dirt and leaves. Dean speeds up his walk. “Cas, what happened?”

Cas grunts and uses his arms to heave himself into a half-sitting, half-leaning position, which is when Dean sees the gash on his forehead, blood running down his face.

“Shit!” he exclaims, crashing to his knees beside Castiel. Hot panic rises in his throat. Closer inspection shows that Castiel’s arm is bent unnaturally too, probably broken.

“I heard … voices,” Castiel says, voice grinding in his throat. “Not yours. I did not know if you were coming back, and the cabin is not defensible. I ran.”

“Straight into a tree?” Dean asks, trying to keep his voice light despite his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He uses his flannel to clean some of the blood off Castiel’s face. “Fuck. Cas, I don’t know if I can fix your arm, and your head might—”

Castiel holds up a hand to Dean’s mouth. His eyes are wide, gaze sharp as he listens for something.

After a moment, Dean hears voices, too. Just as he does, Castiel shoves his head down so they’re both hiding in the foliage.

“... understand why Naomi thinks it would land here,” a man’s nasal voice says, words muffled by his footsteps.

A second man, voice lower, speaks up. “The General was very clear. The location and the timing line up. Plus, you saw the damage to the fence. It’s consistent with what we’ve seen it do back in training.”

Dean twists his head to look at Cas, who is looking back at him with wide eyes.

“Yes, I know. But it’s built for _survival_ as well as defense. Unless it were in danger, it wouldn’t have reason to be looking for a place like this to scavenge, it would be looking to...”

The voices fade as the men walk further away; Dean only catches a word here and there. He dares to poke his head up for a second and watch them leave—there are three of them, in fact. One has glasses, the second is blond, and the third is older, with greying, curly hair.

They get into a couple of cars—a red station wagon and a blue sedan—and drive off in the opposite direction Dean came from, into town rather than further into the forest where the road to the garage lies.

Once he’s sure they’re alone again, Dean stands up and helps Castiel trudge back to the cabin. His hands are shaking. If Castiel needs a hospital Dean doesn’t know what he’s gonna do, so he just keeps saying, “Don’t worry, Cas, we’ll get you fixed up, I’m plenty good at fixing stuff so I’m sure I can do the same for your arm, just hang on ...”

Safely inside the cabin, Dean collapses beside Castiel on the floor. He takes a few deep breaths, centering himself, and then stops short as he turns to take stock of the damage.

Not only is Castiel not bleeding anymore, but the gash on his forehead is nothing more than a sliver of a scab now. The blood left on his face is just what’s still drying from before.

“Wait. How did ...”

“What?”

“Your head, it had a huge cut, you were bleeding everywhere—and your arm, it was busted, broken!” Dean says, while Cas just holds the arm in question out in front of him, angles all in place, curling his fingers experimentally.

Castiel shrugs. “Now it is fixed.”

“So, what, you can heal yourself?”

“Yes.”

It’s a good thing Dean is already sitting down. “Holy shit.”

“It is critical for my survival,” Castiel elaborates. Whatever the fuck that means. Sure, instant self-healing sounds like a great idea. The trouble is just that it’s literally impossible for a human to do it.

Something else occurs to him. “So, wait, if you can heal, then why are your wings still broken?”

Castiel looks at the ground, and his wings start shifting almost ... self-consciously? Can his wings do that? Regardless, Castiel looks highly uncomfortable and shy all of a sudden.

“Guess you don’t know, huh,” Dean ventures. He taps his temple, where the bump in Castiel’s skull is.

Castiel watches him do it, but otherwise ignores the comment, looking around for something else to focus on. Castiel hates talking about that bump and the apparent associated memory loss.

“Who were those men?” he asks instead.

“I don’t know,” Dean says. “They didn’t look like they were from the power station. You haven’t seen or heard anyone else around here before?”

“No.”

Dean hums. “They were coming back from the power station, talking about the fence,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. “What were they doing?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel says.

“Sorry,” Dean says sheepishly. “Thinking out loud.”

“They are gone now,” Castiel points out, seeming to want to forget the entire experience. One of his wings curls around him and he focuses intensely on plucking stray leaves out of his feathers.

“Yeah, but they might come back.”

Dean looks around. The cabin is falling apart at the seams, empty aside from some spare clothes scattered around and a couple food and drink containers Dean and Sam haven’t picked up yet. It’s small, barely big enough for Castiel to sit comfortably with his wings, let alone lie down or have another person or two in here. Sam already pointed out it leaks when it rains.

Castiel can’t stay here, Dean decides. No matter what he is, he can sense discomfort and pain. He doesn’t deserve to be stuck in here forever. Especially if he ever wants to repair his wings and get out of here. For that, they’d need ...

“I’ve got an idea.”


	6. Chapter 6

Castiel frowns at the beige pickup truck Dean has parked outside the cabin.

“This is not your car.”

Dean smiles. “Nice, ain’t she? Traded Baby off for the night and drove this guy from the garage. Didn’t think my car would enjoy your wings poking at her insides, though I’m sure she misses me.”

“Cars don’t have feelings.”

“Apparently you do, and you’re half metal,” Dean points out.

Castiel seems to consider this very seriously. He nods to himself, then tilts his head. “Does this car also have feelings?”

“Cas, I was just—you know what, forget about it.” Dean shakes his head. “The important thing is that she’s here to help you out. Hop in.”

Castiel looks at him blankly.

Dean exhales. “Look, I had to get a pickup because you won’t fit in my car. Where we’re going is too far to walk, plus we gotta go through town, and as long as your wings are out of commission, we need another way to get you from point A to point B. Solution? Pickup truck.”

Castiel still doesn’t seem convinced. He stalks up to the front of the truck and lays a gentle hand on the hood. His wings twitch slightly, feathers flexing and folding. Curiosity, Dean realises. Castiel’s face might be pretty expressive on its own, but Dean’s already beginning to realise that there’s a whole other dimension to him, that the way he moves his wings can be as indicative of his feelings as his expressions. It’s just a new type of body language, one Dean has to learn to read.

“You said going,” Castiel says, low and creaking. Dean thinks it’s a question.

“Like I said yesterday—I think those guys who were poking around were feds.” Castiel’s eyebrows knit together as he listens to Dean. “Feds—sorry, the government. Point is, we don’t want them to find you. It’s not safe for you to stay here, so I’m taking you somewhere else where you’ll be harder to find.”

Castiel looks sad at that, gaze falling to the truck, as though he might take strength from it. Maybe it does have feelings Castiel can sense after all.

“Hey,” Dean says, getting closer and locking eyes with Castiel, and God, being the focus of that piercing blue stare will never cease to be exhilarating. Dean’s voice softens. “I know you like it here, but you’re gonna like it a hundred times more where we’re going. I promise.”

“Promise?” Castiel asks.

Dean can’t help but smile reassuringly. “Promise.”

There’s a blanket in the bed of the truck Dean plans to cover Cas with—just while they’re going down the busier roads, although it’s almost 10:00 p.m. and there shouldn’t be many cars out. Dean’s ready to get this show on the road, but when he gestures for Castiel to hop in, he frowns, then turns and walks back to the cabin. Dean stands there for a second, dumbfounded, before he shakes himself back into action.

“Uh. Cas?”

Castiel emerges a moment later, closing the door delicately behind him, arms holding the pile of comic books Dean brought him. He looks a little sheepish, clutching them protectively to his chest as he dutifully goes to climb into the bed of the truck. It’s not cute, Dean tells himself. Castiel has wings sharper than most knives Dean’s seen, and he could probably kill Dean in a second if he wanted to. He’s not endearing at all.

It’s also not endearing when Dean helps Castiel hop out of the truck once it’s parked in the back of Tran’s Garage and Scrapyard. Castiel’s eyes go wide and his wings flare out as he looks around.

“Dean,” he says, sounding a bit overwhelmed.

“Thought you might blend in here a bit better than in the middle of the forest,” Dean explains, unable to resist smiling. Castiel looks awed and a little apprehensive, as if he isn’t sure what’s real, whether he’s allowed to be here. “So, yeah. Surprise. Welcome to the scrapyard. If you’re determined to fly and you’re gonna tear apart metal to fix those feathers, you might as well do it where it’s not gonna hurt anyone. Hell, if you can find the materials you want, I’ve got the tools here to fashion ‘em into whatever you need.”

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas repeats, eyes darting around as if trying to take in everything at once.

Dean laughs a bit nervously. “Don’t get too excited, buddy. It’s just junk. And you’ll still have to stay hidden during the day, and not make _too_ much noise, but otherwise, go wild.”

Castiel seems to take those instructions to heart, walking forward to start sifting through a pile of hubcaps. His whole body seems to be vibrating, as though he’s barely containing himself. Dean watches with an amused grin as Cas picks his way around, wings moving fluidly with his body. After a moment, Cas reaches down and victoriously holds up a piece of scrap metal the length of Dean’s arm. It looks like the same alloy and quality as Cas’ wings, and it’s big enough that Dean could fashion it into a makeshift feather.

Dean nods. “Start a collection. If you let me take some measurements and show me where they need to go, I can make some feathers for you out of them. I’ve got some welding tools I can use to fix those dents and bends, too.”

Castiel doesn’t just smile. He _beams_ at Dean, happiness reaching every corner of his face.

With a sharp pang to his heart, Dean realises he’s never seen Cas smile before. Even in the dark, both of them only illuminated by the small gas lamp Dean brought along, Cas’s blue eyes seem brighter than ever. He’s beautiful.

Dean blushes and looks away. “Uh, yeah. You’re welcome, man. Come on, let’s keep looking.”

Admittedly, Dean mostly watches Cas, opting to stay out of the way since he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Castiel’s wings are even more a part of him than Dean initially thought, and he seems to know just what he needs to fix them.

Including a piece of titanium pipe jammed underneath a pile of rusted bumpers, which collapses with a deafening crash when Castiel yanks the pipe free with ease.

Both of them freeze, eyes snapping to each other’s.

The house light clicks on at the front of the yard.

“Shit, shit, shit, fuck,” Dean mutters, looking frantically from side to side. The lamp is dim, but it’s the middle of the night. It’ll be visible for sure if anyone comes looking. Castiel hasn’t moved, still clutching the pipe, frozen on the spot and looking to Dean for help.

“Hello?” comes Linda’s voice. Light from a distant flashlight travels over their heads. “Who’s out there?”

Castiel’s attention snaps to the source of the noise, wings flaring up. In fear or defense, Dean isn’t sure.

“Cas, shh, no, put your damn wings down.” They lower halfway, but Castiel does meet Dean’s eyes again. “That’s my boss. I—I’ll handle it, but you’ve gotta hide, okay?” Dean whispers frantically. He starts as Linda’s voice calls out again, closer this time. They’re still relatively concealed by a few rusted pickups, but Linda will turn the corner and be within sight any minute. Castiel’s wings twitch nervously again. “ _Cas._ It’ll be fine, just. Go, hide, now!”

Dean barely gets his breathing under control before Linda’s flashlight lands on him. He holds up a hand to shield his eyes.

Linda lowers her flashlight—and the crowbar in her other hand. “Dean?”

“Hey, Mrs. Tran,” he says, grinning to make up for the tremor in his words.

She huffs in annoyance. Her demeanour is in no way undermined by the bunny slippers she’s wearing. “What the fuck are you doing here? It’s nearly midnight. I almost took you down with a crowbar.”

“And I am very grateful you didn’t,” he says earnestly. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a wingtip peek out from behind the body of a 1942 Pontiac. “Just uh ... thought I’d keep working on this here Chevy,” he continues, patting the hood of the pickup and trying to keep his voice low and casual. “Tune-ups, you know, they can take forever if you can’t find the one thing that’s making that weird noise.”

Linda looks at him blankly, unimpressed and unconvinced. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“And it’s dark.”

“I brought a lamp.”

“And you don’t have any tools with you.”

Dean swallows.

“Dean,” she says gravely, “you’re a smart man and a good employee. You know better than this. Don’t lie to me.”

“I wouldn’t—I mean, you. Uh. I just drove up here for some fresh air?”

She looks at him disparagingly. “Try again.”

“Look, I couldn’t sleep and sometimes it’s just peaceful to do some idle work, get my mind off—”

There’s a faint crash from where Dean knows Castiel is hiding.

Linda snaps back to attention, hand tightening on the crowbar and flashlight beam darting over to the rusted Pontiac. “What was that?”

“Uh. What was what?”

She shoots him another look and her voice drops to a low, urgent whisper. “Get behind me, quick.” Before he has a chance to react—or point out that he’s almost two feet taller than her and standing behind her is pretty useless as a defensive tactic—she rushes over towards the source of the noise. Towards Cas.

“Wait!” Dean calls, following on her heels. “Mrs. Tran—Linda—it’s not what you think!”

Linda ignores him. “Whoever you are, you better show yourself—now!”

Dean’s heart rate ramps up again when Castiel steps out from where he’d been crouching, eyes icy and defiant but still holding an undercurrent of uncertainty. As Linda holds up her crowbar like a weapon, Cas extends his wings deliberately. They look strung taut, holding a defensive position but ready to strike.

Linda falters only a second, gasping quietly before she yells, “Dean, stay back!” and raises the crowbar, lunging forward.

“Stop!” Dean shouts, leaping between them, narrowly missing the first swipe of the steel bar. He keeps his back to Castiel, shielding him as much as possible. His heart thuds so hard he can feel it in his throat.

“Dean, what are you doing?” Linda’s eyes are wide with terror, even as her jaw is set with fury. “Get away from that thing!”

“He’s not a thing,” Dean says desperately, hands held up in front of him. He hears Cas shuffle behind him. “His name is Castiel. He’s a friend.”

“ _What_ is he? What is he doing here?”

“He’s...” Dean winces. “I don’t really know. But he’s not dangerous.”

Linda glares harder, if possible. “He has weapons strapped to his back. He’s probably a Russian super-soldier here to scope us out!”

“They’re not weapons, they’re wings, and they’re a part of him.” His voice is tight with desperation, but he doesn’t care. “Please, Linda, he doesn’t wanna hurt anyone. He’s just lost and scared and needs some scrap metal to fix himself up. He’s a little different, but he’s still a person.”

Linda looks skeptical, but her grip on the crowbar loosens. “So what, he was just gonna hide in my backyard and you weren’t gonna tell me? What if one of our clients ran into him? Or Kevin?”

Dean feels heat creep up the back of his neck. “I ... didn’t really think of that. But he would never hurt Kevin, or anyone.”

“And does he speak?” Linda asks, leaning to look past Dean, directly at Castiel.

“Yes,” Castiel says simply.

Dean turns towards Cas. His face is still stormy, brow furrowed, but his wings have dropped so that the tips brush the ground, undefended and vulnerable. He gazes at Linda with his usual curiosity.

“He doesn’t say much,” Dean admits.

“Dean,” Linda says on a sigh. “What is going on?”

“I’ll tell you everything I know,” he promises. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, Dean barely suppresses a yawn. “Later. For now, he really does need a place to stay. He’ll blend in here, he can be really quiet when he needs to be, he’ll stay out of your way, I’ll check in on him and take care of everything else. I know it’s a lot to ask, but ... just for now. Please, Linda.”

She looks at Castiel appraisingly. Dean can see the gears turning in her head. “How strong is he?”

Dean blinks. “What?”

“He’s gotta be pretty strong to support those bad boys,” she says, pointing at the wings. Cas frowns at the term, checking his wings as though to see why Linda would think they’re bad. There’s a glint in Linda’s eye. “Can he help me with some of the heavy lifting around the yard?”

“Uh. Maybe? Cas?”

Castiel glances between the two of them for a moment, calculating. Then, apparently having made a decision, he walks back over to the Pontiac he’d been hiding behind, leans over, and just fucking picks the whole thing up off the ground like it’s nothing. It’s all Dean can do to keep his jaw from dropping as Cas takes a few steps and deposits the car on another patch of grass, easy as pie.

While Dean is still flabbergasted, Linda just nods. “Okay. He can stay. He can hide during the day and help me out with cleanup in the evenings.” She looks at Dean, serious again. “But I am not feeding him.”

“Uh.” Dean suddenly registers what she’s saying. “Yes! Okay, yes. Oh my god, Linda, thank you so much, you have no idea.”

“Just keep him away from the house,” she instructs. Somehow, she’s already relaxed enough to be heading back to bed. “You can tell me the rest tomorrow. Say hi to your mom, Dean.”

Dean stands there gaping after her for another couple seconds. He shakes himself. “Holy shit, Cas, that was amazing! How did you do that?”

Castiel merely shrugs at him. He looks a little self-conscious.

“Anyway, this is great,” he continues, still a little hysterical, but relieved beyond belief. “This way I can keep a better eye on you, you don’t have to stay cooped up inside, we can fix your wings, and hopefully the government won’t come looking around here.”

He grins at Castiel, unable to help himself. The corners of Castiel’s lips turn up and he looks down, not quite smiling but certainly pleased.

Dean heaves a sigh, follows it with a yawn. “Alright, well as long as you’re good to make yourself at home, I’m gonna head out. But I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

Castiel nods.

“Oh, and Cas, buddy, one more thing.” Dean puts a hand on Castiel’s shoulder. Cas furrows his brow. “When a tiny, angry woman who probably has a black belt comes at you with a crowbar, you don’t puff up your wing-knives like a peacock. You do what she says. Life advice.” He pats Castiel’s shoulder, rock solid, once.

“I’m sorry. You sounded ...” Castiel searches for the right word. “Distressed.”

“Well, yeah.”

Castiel frowns, but it seems to be more directed at himself than the situation. He says, cautiously, as though he’s trying the words out, “She sounded dangerous. I did not want you to be hurt.”

Dean feels his face heat up. “Um, yeah. Well, heh, likewise, buddy.”

He realises he’s still holding Castiel’s shoulder and abruptly drops his hand, trying to shake off the butterflies in his stomach. “I’m gonna split. But I’ll, um.” He clears his throat. “Tomorrow. Right. I’ll bring sandwiches. Okay. Goodnight.”

It’s a good thing Baby is a five-minute walk down the hill, because it takes at least half that time for Dean’s face to stop burning.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean arrives at work the next morning with sandwiches and milkshakes in Baby’s trunk as promised. There’s no one in sight when he hops out of the car, but he follows the faint sounds of someone rummaging through junk metal to a spot near the back of the yard, well-hidden but not too isolated from the house, on the border of the scrap and the forest.

Castiel, for his part, has made good on Dean’s instruction to ‘start a collection’ of materials needed to fix his wings. A pile of axles, bolts, and metal sheets from the bodies of cars and trucks litters what used to be a clear patch of ground.

“Hey Cas,” Dean shouts. He still can’t see the guy but figures he must be close by. “Brought you some grub.”

Within moments, Castiel appears, gracefully poking his way around the cars. He makes a face at the sandwiches Dean is holding up. “No tuna?”

“Would I do that to you?” Dean asks, tossing Cas two PB&J. He doesn’t linger too long on how odd it is that he knows the food preferences of a robot. He’s learning to just roll with these things.

“Thank you, Dean.”

“Any time—well, except the weekends, I might send Sam once or twice to check on you in my place.”

“That is acceptable.”

Dean laughs.

Truthfully, setting Cas up in the junkyard is maybe the best plan he’s ever had. He no longer worries that Cas is gonna get hurt from being all cramped up; he’s got acres of land to explore. It means it’s way easier to keep an eye on him and bring him food every day. Hell, despite her earlier threats, Linda does actually offer to feed Cas from time to time. That, plus the fact that she’s started talking to Castiel directly rather than through Dean, is a big sign of acceptance from her, even if she still doesn’t let Kevin hang around Cas too much.

They don’t really have any guarantee Cas won’t hurt them somehow, even though Dean doubts that possibility more and more every day. But Castiel is kind, and mindful of Linda’s schedule and boundaries. He’s the perfect guest. Between repairing cars as well as Castiel’s wings, Dean finds the days go by easily, his nerves settling more and more.

Not that they’re ever dull. Dean can admit that changing a car’s oil gets boring and repetitive after awhile, no matter the make or model. But working on Castiel’s wings is putting all of his mechanic skills to the test. He gets to pull all of Linda’s rarely-used tools out of storage: the press brake, the jigsaw, even the welding equipment a couple times. Sure, Castiel is the one guiding him and instructing him what needs to be made to which specifications to go where. And admittedly, he does a lot of the heavy lifting (literally—what, like Dean can lift entire halves of cars on his own).

But Dean is the one actually _building_ these feathers and oiling these gears and bending these steel beams until they become functioning parts of a whole. Hearing a car rumble to life after repairs is satisfying, but watching Castiel smile as he lifts his wing to discover it no longer creaks and catches makes his heart warm in an entirely unique way.

Dean’s hammering out a dent in one of Cas’ primaries when suddenly Castiel flinches, clenches his teeth. Something occurs to him—something that should have occurred to him a long time ago, probably.

“Hey,” he says, putting down his tools. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Castiel replies flatly.

“It’s just … I never really considered you might be able to feel what I’m doing to your wings. That it might hurt to have me swinging a hammer at it for an hour, you know?”

Castiel nods slowly. “You worry you are causing me discomfort.”

Dean shrugs, throat still tight with worry he’s been hurting Cas this whole time.

“You need not worry,” Cas continues. “My wings are part of my body, but they do not contain nerve endings.”

Dean lets out a breath. “Okay. Good, uh, that’s good.” He rubs his arms, trying to return some circulation to them as the wing gusts around him. “Do you feel anything when I’m doing this?”

“I feel … peripherally,” Cas says. “When you strike my wings, or pull them, or drill into them, I feel pressure, but no pain. It is the same way I feel them move—movement through my back, but nothing directly along the wings.”

“Huh.” Dean picks up the hammer again, tosses it and catches it. “But your hands and whatnot—you can feel with those? They do have nerve endings?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, Sam said you got hurt at the power station, so you clearly feel pain, and you have taste buds and can feel textures with your hands. I guess I’m just wondering why a mostly-robot needs all those things.”

Castiel flinches, his amused smile dissolving and his wings hunching in a bit. Dean’s stomach clenches.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Cas says, his voice small. He’s fixed his eyes on a piece of grass ahead of him.

Dean swallows. “Hey, I’m sorry. No more questioning-who-and-what-you-are crap, okay? It doesn’t matter. You’re probably uncomfortable enough with me all up in your business physically right now anyway, no need to make this worse.”

Castiel doesn’t look up, but he does narrow his eyes a little more. “This isn’t bad at all,” he says.

“What?”

“Your work on my wings does not make me uncomfortable,” Cas says, glancing at Dean again, his eyes open and sincere. “Quite the opposite. It is … pleasant, to know that you are careful and attentive to both my body and myself. I enjoy these moments.”

Dean blinks. Sometimes Castiel says things like this, and even though Dean knows that’s just the way the guy’s mind (or programming) works, it still sweeps Dean off his feet. Dean already feels a little off-kilter when he thinks about how _intimate_ it is to essentially be rebuilding part of Castiel. Learning that Castiel has similar impressions of these shared moments is both heartwarming and rattling.

“Yeah.” Now Dean’s the one who can’t meet Castiel’s eyes. “Anyway. Let’s get these last bolts put in and call it a night.”

* * *

One Saturday afternoon, while Dean is putting the finishing touches on one of Castiel’s new feathers, Linda rushes out the door of the house. She looks more than a little frazzled. Kevin is dragging his feet behind her as she tugs him along.

“Whoa, hey, Mrs. Tran, you alright?” Dean asks, standing up.

She takes a minute to even realise he’s there, still fumbling around in her bag with one hand. “Everything is fine, except no one knows how to read a map or tell time or think of anyone else’s schedule on a _Saturday_ of all days ...”

Dean sees Cas lift an eyebrow in his direction. Dean shrugs and looks back at Linda, following her as she moves towards her truck at the front. “Emergency?”

“In that we’ll lose a lot of money if I don’t get down to pick up this new shipment from three towns over in the next two hours, then yes, even though it’s not _my_ fault not a single man has ever known what he’s doing.”

Dean smartly only comments to say, “I can go, if you like. I’ve got nothing going on.”

She sighs. “No, it’s alright, I’ve got to sign off on the papers anyway.”

“Then at least let me watch Kevin for you?”

Kevin looks at his mom with big, puppy dog eyes. “I don’t wanna sit in the car all day. Please can I stay with Dean?”

Linda finally stops to take a breath. She turns to eye Castiel warily.

“It’ll be cool,” Dean hurries to assure her, knowing she’s still a little wary of Kevin being around Castiel and his enormous wings. “We’ll play hide and seek. I’ll make pasta for dinner and feed the cat, it won’t be any trouble.”

Linda still looks unconvinced, but Kevin is practically bouncing off the end of her arm by now, so she relents with a sigh. “Fine. Just don’t play around any of the tools. Or anything sharp. And no candy,” she directs at Kevin, before turning back to Dean. “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, and before he knows it, he’s alone in the scrapyard with only a robot, an 8-year-old, and a cat for company.

Fortunately, Dean loves kids. He loves when Kevin visits him while he’s working, posing an endless string of questions, such as _What does this part do?_ and _Where does this piece go?_ and _Why can’t this car be painted green? Green is the best color._

Dean crouches down to Kevin’s height. “Don’t worry, kiddo, I’ve got some candy stashed in my car. I’ll get you some later.”

Kevin’s eyes light up. “What kind?”

“Some strawberry saltwater taffy—Cas loves the stuff, but I’m sure he’ll share.” He looks over at Castiel, who nods solemnly.

Kevin leans in close to Dean and whispers, “Is Castiel nice?”

“What?” Dean says, taken aback. “Of course he’s nice. He’s the nicest guy I know. I know his wings are a little scary, but he’s actually extra cute and cuddly to make up for it.” Kevin still looks a little apprehensive, so Dean adds, “Here, you wanna come say hi?”

“Okay,” Kevin says. Dean takes his hand and leads him back to the workbench where Castiel is standing.

“Cas, Kevin is gonna spend the evening with us,” Dean explains.

Cas nods once. “This is acceptable.”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“Are your wings real?” Kevin asks bluntly.

“Yes,” Castiel replies. He stretches out the wing not currently under construction and then pulls it back in to demonstrate.

“Can you fly?”

“Not right now,” Castiel says. “My wings are too damaged. Which is why Dean is helping to fix them.”

“Here,” Dean says, picking up the latest feather piece he’d moulded and handing it to Kevin. “You wanna watch?”

Which is how Dean ends up spending a good half hour attaching Castiel’s new feather, with a never-ending barrage of questions from Kevin as the soundtrack. Despite his earlier reluctance, Kevin seems to have warmed right up to Cas now; hearing Castiel’s succinct, patient answers to Kevin’s rushed and ill-phrased questions is hysterical. Dean doesn’t stop smiling the entire time he’s attaching the feather.

By the time Dean finishes and wipes off his hands, he’s pretty sure Kevin and Castiel are best friends.

“Do you like cats?” Kevin asks.

Castiel shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t recall ever meeting one.”

Kevin gasps in horror and immediately turns to Dean. “Can I show Castiel my cat?”

“Sure thing, Kev, as long as you keep an eye on him and don’t let him wander off,” Dean says.

Kevin is gone in a flash, his speed seeming to perplex even Castiel.

Dean claps him on the shoulder. “Kids can be kind of weird, buddy, don’t sweat it.”

“I don’t sweat at all,” Castiel replies. Dean just stares at him. He can’t figure out if that was a joke or not.

He’s saved from having to decide one way or the other by Kevin sprinting back to the workbench with his cat held against his chest. The creature looks profoundly awkward and uncomfortable in Kevin’s small arms.

“This is Wizard! Like the wizards in the books mom reads me. Except I couldn’t pick just one, so I named him after all of them.”

“I see,” Castiel says seriously, and even Dean can tell it’s a little indulgent. Cas is already good at interacting with Kevin, if their budding friendship is anything to go by. Dean finds himself smiling again, this time at Castiel.

And no, it’s not endearing that the guy is good with kids and animals or anything. Shut up.

“I don’t think he has any magical powers, though,” Kevin continues. “Do you, Wizard?”

“Meow,” replies Wizard, who takes Kevin’s moment of stillness to scramble and push his way out of the kid’s arms. Dean’s ready to spring into action to catch the kitty, but luck is with him that day since Wizard just sits down on the ground once out of Kevin’s grip.

Castiel kneels and looks down at him. Wizard stares back.

“You can pet him, Cas,” Dean offers.

Cas looks at Dean with trepidation but does reach out. For all that Castiel can be huge and terrifying and unnatural, the movement of his hands is steady and gentle. Wizard leans into his fingers like this is the most blissful experience of his life.

That is, until Kevin tries to pick him up again. The cat is ready this time, and before Kevin can properly get a hold of him, Wizard leaps out of the way. He lands on Castiel’s right wing, his claws clinging onto the curves in the metal.

“Whoa!” Kevin exclaims.

Castiel startles, too, but he recovers quickly. Without missing a beat, he slowly extends his wings, twisting them a little so Wizard has more surface to walk on. He even leans forward a bit as he stands so as not to knock Wizard off.

“Neat trick,” Dean says, laughing. “Maybe Wizard is magical after all, hey Kev?”

If Kevin’s obsession with Castiel hadn’t been apparent already, Castiel’s balancing act with Wizard solidifies it. Kevin follows Castiel around for the rest of the day, which makes Dean’s babysitting job surprisingly easy. All he has to do is feed one cat, two humans, and one sort-of-robot and the evening sails by.

In the quiet time after their stir-fry dinner, Dean finds a deck of cards and a box of nuts and bolts and attempts to teach them how to play a few games. He starts with a watered-down version of poker, but after ten minutes of blank looks from Castiel and confused ones from Kevin, he relents.

“Anyone got any threes?” he asks.

Naturally, everyone is way more receptive to Go Fish.

Linda pulls up during their sixth round, at which point Kevin has incorporated an element of fishing for the nuts into the game. Making sure Wizard doesn’t get too close and eat them adds to the challenge.

Dean excuses himself from the game. “Everything go okay?”

“As okay as it could’ve,” Linda says. “I’ll unload everything tomorrow, I’m beat. How’s Kevin?”

“Fed, happy, winning at Go Fish, I think.”

Linda watches her son over Dean’s shoulder, still eyeing Castiel intensely even as the guy is sitting cross-legged on the floor with Wizard rubbing his face against one of his wings.

Dean looks at her apologetically. “I don’t think I could’ve stopped them becoming best friends if I tried.”

Just then, Kevin stands up, declares “Wow!” and holds up his hand palm-first. Cas takes a bit of guidance to get his hand up too, but Kevin seems pleased once they high five.

It might be Dean’s imagination, but Linda seems much more relaxed around Castiel after that day, and Kevin is allowed free rein of the yard after school again. It makes everything less tense at work, which is a relief.

* * *

Unfortunately, things get decidedly tenser at home.

Dean thinks he’s been doing a fair job acting normally around his mom since this whole debacle started, which has been pretty easy since the two of them haven’t been home at the same time much lately. Mary’s been picking up extra shifts and switching around her schedule to cover for her co-worker who’d gotten pneumonia. She’s recovered and back to work now, though, which means Mary is home most evenings when Dean would normally be spending time with Cas now.

One evening Sunday evening, when Sam is out with Eileen and both Dean and Mary are home, he offers to make dinner for them both, and pulls out all the stops, squad and potatoes and green beans on the side. He tells her it’s his treat to her after she spent almost three weeks working overtime, but privately thinks it’s also an apology for all he’s not telling her.

“Linda keeping you busy at work?” Mary asks as the two of them are doing dishes that night.

“Hmm?” Dean mumbles, distracted by thoughts of what he should bring Castiel for lunch tomorrow.

“You’re there late almost every night,” she points out.

“Oh.” He swallows and scrubs at a plate extra hard. He’d really hoped she hadn’t noticed with everything else going on. “Yeah. Lots of people looking to get things fixed up before winter rolls in, you know how it is.”

Mary only hums. “And how’s Charlie?”

Dean shrugs. “Good, I think.”

“I would think you’d be surer considering you saw her yesterday.”

Dean bites his lip. Crap, he hadn’t been imagining his mom’s knowing tone. She’s definitely suspicious. And rightfully so—Dean lied about going to see Charlie last night as just another excuse to drop in to see Castiel. Dean’s starting him in on the Batman comics, and watching someone read them for the very first time is maybe more entertaining than reading them himself. Not to mention Castiel always has the most original questions about characters’ motivations and what makes a hero versus a villain for Dean while he’s reading. And he always has this charming, focused expression on his face. Dean clears his throat. “Uh, yeah. She’s good, just busy.”

“Just like you, I guess.”

“Yep.” Dean looks down. “Just like me.”

He starts a bit when Mary’s hand, warm and comforting, settles on his back. “Dean. Is something bothering you?”

“Not at all,” he replies with a forced grin.

She doesn’t seem convinced. A small furrow appears between her eyebrows. “Look, sweetie, I’m sorry. I know I haven’t been around much lately, and I just don’t want you to think I don’t still care about you and want to know how -”

“What? Mom, no, you’ve been working so hard, you’ve got nothing to apologise for. You’re supposed to be relaxing and not worrying about everything. That’s why I’m treating you to dinner, okay?”

She smiles at him. “I know. And I’m lucky to have such a wonderful kid. But just because I’ve been busy, doesn’t mean that I haven’t noticed you’ve been acting different.”

Dean’s insides squirm.

“You know you can talk to me, right?” she asks, drying towel set aside for the moment, so she can see his eyes. “I won’t judge you for anything. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I am okay. Job, friends, family, what more do you need?” Dean’s ribcage feels tight around his lungs, and he knows he’s not smiling as easily as he should be.

Mary frowns a bit. “I’m glad your life is going well, and I’m proud of you for being such a responsible adult, but I’m still going to worry about you and look out for you. If you need help, I’m here.”

Dean’s insides are all twisted up with guilt. God, he hates lying to her, but he doesn’t wanna let anyone else in on Castiel. Not right now.

“I promise I’d tell you if something were going on, but I’m good,” he says, picking up a handful of cutlery to rinse off, letting the clatter of steel fill the room so he doesn’t have to talk anymore. He can’t quite meet her eyes.


	8. Chapter 8

“That should just ... about ... do it,” Dean announces as he twists the wrench until it won’t go any more. “There. Give ‘em a shake, rattle and roll.”

“What?”

“Just move them around, make sure nothing sticks.”

Cas nods and dutifully gives his wings a shake. Dean thinks he sort of looks like a bird that just got out of a birdbath, but on a completely different scale. The beat of Castiel’s wings seems to shake the ground, sending out a gust of wind that ruffles the trees and makes the shutters bang against the house. The interlocking metal feathers seem to move independently but seamlessly, not knocking or scraping together. There are still a few gaps in the array, but the wonky forward bend to Cas’ left wing is gone, and a couple of replaced gears means the wings no longer squeak when they hit their full extension. The movement is fluid, natural. Cas looks beautiful.

Or, you know. His wings look beautiful. Cool. Nifty. Objectively.

Dean realizes he’s been staring at Castiel with his jaw slack long enough that Castiel is now peering right back expectantly.

“French fries to celebrate?” Dean asks after clearing his throat. He opens up the paper bag he’d stashed under the workbench and passes Castiel one of the small trays, already leaking grease at the corners.

Cas hops onto the hood of a Continental that’s missing an engine and narrows his eyes. “Did you bring vinegar?”

“Yes, weirdo,” Dean says, tossing him a couple packets from the bag, along with some ketchup, because naturally, Castiel can’t just eat his fries with one or the other. No, he has to have both.

Dean can’t really roll his eyes at him for long, though. Not when Cas has that tiny satisfied smile in the corner of his mouth. Dean can’t help but be transfixed, even as Cas gracelessly shoves a few fries into his mouth. Cas is perplexing and alien and mesmerising, electric eyes and long fingers. And, of course, enormous metal wings hanging on either side of him.

Dean swallows. “Um, you’ve got some ketchup there.”

Castiel frowns. “Where?”

“Just ...” Dean mimes the spot on his own face, just below his lip.

Castiel half-heartedly—and unsuccessfully—tries to wipe it away.

“Here, just—” Dean says, lifting his hand to Cas’ face. He means to use his sleeve but ends up touching Cas’ chin with his fingers instead, getting rid of the smear of ketchup and vinegar. Castiel’s skin texture is still a little jarring; it’s stiffer than skin should be, but also warm. And kind of soft.

Castiel watches him with those stupid curious eyes. Dean should probably stop touching him now.

He ignores the way Castiel leans into the touch as he pulls away. He’s probably imagining it.

“Thank you,” Cas says. He’s still watching Dean.

“Don’t mention it.”

“I don’t mean just that,” Castiel says. “Thank you for the food, and for giving me shelter, and for fixing my wings. You are—”

“Hey, your wings aren’t even fixed yet,” Dean interjects, trying to turn this conversation around before his cheeks warm any more. “Still gotta replace a couple feather-blades.”

“Nevertheless: thank you,” Castiel repeats.

Dean can’t hold his eyes much longer. He looks down as he fakes a cough. “I’m gonna get us some water. Hang tight. Or you know. Just stay there.”

Dean turns away before the staring contest can resume.

He’s not an idiot. He knows why he keeps fixating on the particular arch of Cas’ nose and the swoop of his hair, and why his entire face heats up and his heart beats erratically when Cas stares at him for too long. He’s had feelings for people before.

But that’s just the problem: Dean’s had feelings for _people_ before, and even if they didn’t return them, at least Dean knew how human brains—and hearts—worked most of the time. With Castiel ... sure, the guy has feelings. But he also has a lot of social ineptitudes and things that set him apart from humans, and so it’s unlikely he’d be able to harbour feelings for Dean in return, let alone understand Dean’s in the first place. And he won’t be around forever. Falling for Cas any more than he already has can only lead to heartbreak. He only wishes he knew how to stop it.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much time to brainstorm before the sound of voices cut into his reverie.

He hears Linda before he sees her; she’s talking to someone, probably a client that needed an emergency repair to be here this late.

Dean turns the corner and nearly stumbles. The guy Linda is talking to—middle-aged, with curly greying hair and tired eyes—looks familiar. Suspiciously so. He doesn’t notice he’s staring until Linda clears her throat pointedly.

“Dean, this is Mr. ...” she trails off, looking back to the man.

“Please, just Metatron is fine,” he says. His smile sends a chill up Dean’s spine.

“He says the engine’s making weird sounds, could you take a look before the end of the day?”

“Uh.” Dean blinks, trying to re-centre himself. “Sure. Where’s the car?”

Metatron points back down the driveway. “Just that one. I know it’s last minute, but I’m from out of town and I really don’t wanna keep driving without a check.”

Dean tunes him out as soon as he sees the car. The same red station wagon he’d seen on the road to the power station that day. He’s sure of it.

“Uh. Is that okay?” Metatron says, snapping Dean out of it. He looks mildly concerned and annoyed, but there’s an undercurrent of something Dean can’t quite place.

“Yes, yeah, sure, of course,” Dean stammers. “Could you just give me a second? Gotta ... grab some tools ... left them in the back. Excuse me.” He darts off back into the salvage yard before he can incriminate himself any more.

Castiel is still perched on the hood of the Continental, munching at his gross fries.

“Cas,” Dean whisper-yells, panic creeping into his tone. “You gotta hide.”

All this earns him is a head-tilt.

“I don’t have time to explain,” Dean says. “Someone might be looking for you. Go hide at the back of the yard as quietly as you can, and I’ll come get you when it’s safe.”

Castiel looks concerned but nods, quietly sliding onto his feet and creeping back into the piles of scrap cars. Dean breathes deeply for a moment, then plucks a wrench from his toolbelt and marches back to the front.

“Sorry. Forgot a couple wrenches. What’s the issue?”

The crazy—and unsettling—thing is, when he takes a look at it a few minutes later, there doesn’t seem to be much wrong with the station wagon.

“Well, one of your spark plugs is loose, but other than that I don’t see much of a problem. I can change the oil if you want, just to be sure though.” He looks up, expecting Metatron to be looking over his shoulder. “Uh. Sir?”

Metatron has drifted away from the car and towards the salvage yard. He stands on his tiptoes and looks over the piles of spare parts and wreckage, clearly searching for something. A heavy weight settles in Dean’s stomach.

“Sir! Can I help you?”

“Oh, my apologies,” he says. It sounds so completely disingenuous that it makes Dean’s skin crawl. “I was just admiring this lovely yard of yours.”

“Not mine, sir, I just work here.”

“Any other mechanics?” he asks, taking his sweet-ass time wandering back to Dean, eyes still searching all over.

“No. Just me and Mrs. Tran,” Dean replies impatiently. “Would you like your oil changed or do you wanna give it a go?”

Metatron smiles. “By all means, I’m sure I’m due for an oil change, anyway.”

Dean is skeptical; the car looks to be in tip-top shape. He changes the oil anyway—might as well bring Linda some extra money—but he has to keep looking up to take note of Metatron’s movements. He keeps drifting towards the edge of the yard, into the spare parts piles, behind a junker or two.

Finally, after following Metatron around closely as he supposedly looks for his lost keys and finds his wallet to pay, Dean convinces him to get in the car. He watches the station wagon drive further down the hill. The tension in his muscles doesn’t fade until the car is out of sight.

“Who was that?”

Dean leaps nearly a foot into the air. Standing only a couple feet behind him is Mrs. Tran, fixing him with a look of half-suspicion, half-concern.

“I don’t know. But I saw his car near the power station, the day before I brought Cas here. And just now he kept trying to slip away and poke around the yard. I think he might know that Cas is here.”

“I imagine you don’t think he’s here to answer all our questions and give Castiel a big hug?”

“Not so much.”

Linda scoffs. “What an asshole. Glad you got him to leave.”

“Not without changing his perfectly good oil and charging him for the service first.” He hands over the money Metatron gave him.

“I knew I liked you.”

Dean finds Cas sitting way in the back of the yard, in a nook between some pines and a rust-coated Lancaster. It’s odd, seeing his body curled up, arms hugging his knees and wings pressed to the ground.

“Cas?” Dean says. Cas perks up. “He’s gone. For now, at least.”

He reaches out a hand. Castiel takes it and Dean helps him to his feet. His wings shudder behind him a couple times, shaking off the dirt and pine needles.

“What did he want?”

“You, I’m pretty sure,” Dean answers. “I know your noggin’s still a bit scrambled, but does the name ‘Metatron’ mean anything to you?”

Castiel’s eyebrows knit together the instant Dean says the name. He looks away, a frustrated expression on his face. He stares into the distance for some time. Finally, he sighs. “It sounds familiar. But I don’t know why.”

“Well, don’t hurt yourself. Seriously,” he adds. “We’ll figure it out. He’s gone for now, anyway. Maybe just lay low tonight in case he comes back?”

Castiel is obviously still puzzling over Metatron’s name, but he pulls his mind back long enough to say, “Linda has offered me food tonight. I will eat there and then return to hiding.”

“Sounds good.” Dean hesitates, then reaches for Cas again, laying a hand on his shoulder. “I’m out, but listen, stay safe, alright? It’s Saturday tomorrow, Sam or I will be here in the morning.”

“You, too, stay safe, Dean.”

* * *

The road from Linda’s garage back into town is as empty as it usually is, save for a single pair of headlights in Dean’s rear-view. He’d been too distracted at first to notice them, so the car could’ve just caught up a couple minutes ago. Or ... it could’ve been there since he pulled onto the main road.

He’s just paranoid enough today to want to find out.

The car is a reasonable distance back, not close enough to be chasing him, so Dean’s gonna have to be smart about this. He takes a right where he’d normally keep going straight. Sure enough, a couple minutes later, a car appears in the rear-view again. They’re still technically headed towards town this way, so Dean takes another abrupt turn away, up towards the highway to the next town. Still being followed. Cool.

Dean accelerates above the limit and turns back towards Rockwell. Too hard to lose someone when there’s only about three roads to choose from and you’re the only ones on them.

As they get into town, the car accelerates to get closer to Dean, and though the driver is wearing sunglasses—at night, like a douchebag—Dean recognises the station wagon. _Well,_ Dean thinks, _better he follows me than goes after Cas or Linda._

He’s not going home until he shakes him, so Dean redoubles his efforts, breaks more than a few traffic laws trying to outsmart Metatron and leave him too far behind to catch up. But even after fifteen minutes of persistent driving, the station wagon taunts him in his mirrors.

Plan B, then. He doesn’t make any more zig-zags or sudden stops—he heads straight for the police station. Pulls up in the parking lot—Metatron doesn’t follow him quite that far, but Dean can see him idling around the corner—double checks the locks on his Baby, and marches inside. Desperate times call for confronting your old neighbour (who you had a huge—only possibly mutual—crush on all through adolescence and haven’t really spoken to since then in case it might be too awkward).

“Dean?” Victor says when the receptionist fetches him. “What brings you ‘round?”

Dean puts on his most charming grin. “Oh, I was in the area. You know me, always checking in on old friends.”

“The last few years suggest otherwise,” Victor says, one eyebrow arched, but he’s smiling warmly. He extends a hand for Dean to shake. “It’s good to see you all the same, man. How’ve you been?”

“Not bad. Family’s good, work’s good. Can’t complain. You?”

“Same here. My mom had a tough couple years with her asthma, but she’s doing a lot better now. Mary’s good?”

“Yeah, she’s great.”

Victor smiles again. “I’m glad. Now—what can I do for you, since I know you didn’t just come here for gossip.”

“Ah ...” Dean hesitates. How much should he tell Victor? It’s not that he isn’t trustworthy, but he also has obligations as a police officer. He can’t know about Castiel, or even Sam’s involvement in the power outage. “Actually, I thought I was being followed. Can’t be sure, but this seemed like a good place to come if I was right.”

Victor’s easy smile turns into a frown as he snaps into work mode. “What do you mean, followed?”

“Since a little way down the road from work. He followed me every turn.” Dean walks over to the window, Victor on his heels. “Last I saw he was right—”

The corner where the station wagon had been parked is empty.

“—there.” Dean grumbles under his breath. “Shit. He’s gone.”

“Damn,” Victor says. “What was the car model? License plate? When did you first notice it?”

Dean tries to keep up with his rapid-fire questions. He only answers about half, keeping his answers vague, because he doesn’t want Victor getting tangled up in this ordeal if he can help it. Victor shoots him a skeptical look more than once, as though he doesn’t believe Dean didn’t think to check the license plate number (he did), but he doesn’t say anything. Just writes it down.

He frowns at the final product, though. “I’m not sure we’re gonna be able to do much, man. But I’ll keep it on my radar. And you call if you think you see him, or anyone else suspicious, again. Clear?”

“Crystal,” Dean replies. “Appreciate it.”

“Any time, man.” Victor shuffles some things around on his desk. “So, hey, my shift’s pretty much over, you want a ride home? Less likely to be followed in a cruiser.”

“Yeah, that’d be great.” Dean hesitates. Metatron doesn’t know his last name, so he shouldn’t be able to find the Winchester home yet, but he’d rather be safe than sorry. “Actually—you wanna grab a drink, catch up? It’s been ages, man, I’ve missed seeing you around.”

Victor looks skeptical again. “Yeah, you too, but ... you sure you’re alright, Dean?”

“’Course. Maybe a little shaken from the car chase, but hey, all the more reason to kick back tonight.”

“You just seem ... somewhere else.” His lips turn up in a smile. “If I take you up on that drink, you gonna tell me what’s really bothering you?”

“Depends how many drinks we’re talking.” Dean doesn’t actually wanna get totally blitzed. He just needs to unwind and make himself believe for a few hours that the entire federal government isn’t conspiring against him. He’s spent so much time looking out for everyone else that he hadn’t really registered how exhausted he’s been. Dean needs to take care of himself for a night. Castiel, Sam, Mom, Linda—they’ll all be fine.

Victor laughs. “Fair enough. First round is on me, in that case.”


	9. Chapter 9

Sam is just putting a plate of toast and eggs over-easy on the table for their mom when Dean stumbles down the stairs. His brother catches himself on the bannister, blinking and jerking his head back comically when he gets a face-full of sunlight streaming in the east window. Sam tries not to snicker.

“Morning, Dean,” Mary says, amused. “Sleep well?”

Dean makes an unintelligible noise in reply.

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Sam says, earning a laugh from his mom and a bleary glare from Dean.

“Sam made breakfast,” Mary continues. She smiles at Dean as he starts up the coffee, setting out two mugs.

“Ah, cracking eggs as well as cracking jokes this morning,” Dean says, just as Sam feels a hand creep into his just-brushed hair. Dean barely dodges the arm Sam swings in his direction. “Thanks, kiddo.”

“Toast is only for people who leave my hair alone,” Sam threatens.

“What, got a hot date?”

“As a matter of fact, yes I do. Eileen and I are going out this afternoon.” Sam feels his heart rate pick up a bit just at the idea of it; the thought of her still does that to him. What with going to separate schools and the Castiel situation, it doesn’t leave him much free time to see her. But they’re making it work.

Mary starts in on telling Sam he should invite her over for dinner, as she does every time Sam brings up Eileen. He’s saved by Dean loudly taking a seat and placing two mugs of coffee on the table, one in front of Mary and one by his own plate.

“Thanks, sweetheart. I didn’t hear you come in last night,” Mary says.

Dean shrugs, digging into his plate with vigour. “Had a couple emergency jobs at work, got held up. Then I, uh, ran into Victor, who used to live across the street? We hung out for a while, hit up the bar, lost track of the time catching up, you know.” Dean downs about half his coffee in one go. “He says hi.”

“That’s sweet,” Mary says around her own mug. Sam remembers Victor, and remembers Dean’s embarrassing crush on him even more vividly. Though he has to wonder how much of Dean’s time last night was actually spent with Castiel, as usual.

* * *

“Were you really with Victor last night?” Sam asks after breakfast, out of Mary’s earshot. “Or are you using a guy you used to a crush on to cover up for spending time with the guy you have a crush on now?”

“Ha ha,” Dean deadpans. The red creeping up his face tells a different story than his tone. “I was actually gonna ask if you could go check on Cas today. I think I ought to lay low for a couple days.”

“Why?”

“There was this guy who came by the garage, kept poking around and prodding me for information.” Dean frowns, looking as though there’s more to say.

Sam ducks in closer, lowering his voice. “Who was he? Do you know what he wanted?”

Dean shrugs. “Maybe he was looking for Cas. Maybe not, though. I’m probably just paranoid.”

“Dean, this is—”

“Hey, it’s fine, can you just check on Cas today? Maybe tomorrow, too? I wanna take it easy for the weekend. Just in case.”

Sam narrows his eyes. His brother is terrible at hiding things from him; Sam can always tell. Dean seems genuinely spooked, though, so Sam relents. “Sure thing, man. I’m gonna bring Eileen, if that’s okay. She’s been bugging me for news about Castiel anyway.”

Dean sighs. “No problem. Oh, but take Mom’s car, I’ve gotta get mine from the police station where I left it.” He takes a step back, gathers up some dishes to bring to the sink. “Thanks, Sammy.”

Sam gets through most of his homework in the morning, leaving him free as a bird for the afternoon. Mary makes the two of them some lunch—Dean had split not too long after breakfast and hasn’t come back yet—and spends the entire meal prodding him to ask Eileen to come over that evening. Sam says he’ll ask and escapes before he makes any more promises. He doesn’t think Eileen will have any problem with meeting his mom. But then again, maybe this is more serious to him than it is to her, and he doesn’t want to be presumptuous or make her uncomfortable—especially because no one else in his family knows how to sign more than a couple words—and ...

He’s probably overthinking this and should just start driving.

Eileen greets him with a smile when she gets into the car and says she’s totally happy to go visit Castiel. The two of them swing by the store to pick up some food and water bottles for him before heading up the mountain, admiring the mosaic of reds and oranges and yellows spread throughout the forest.

Cas isn’t hard to find when they get to the scrapyard. He and Linda are just a little behind the house. Castiel is using his wings to help him pick up entire cars and move them elsewhere to clear up some space in the back.

“Hi, Mrs. Tran,” Sam greets. She knows who he is and she’s fine with him coming to spend time with Castiel, but he still feels kind of awkward hanging around his brother’s employer, especially when Dean isn’t there.

Linda doesn’t look up. “Yes, just put it over with the Lincolns.” Once Castiel has deposited the car where she wants it, she acknowledges them. “Hi, Sam. Come to check on Cas?”

“Yeah, Dean couldn’t make it today.” He isn’t facing Eileen, so he signs for her benefit.

“Hmm. Who’s this?” she asks, nodding at Eileen.

“Oh, this is Eileen, she’s my ...” He trails off, his face warming. He looks to Eileen in a panic.

She just smiles and signs _girlfriend_ at him, putting his fears to rest.

“... Girlfriend,” Sam answers, unable to stop smiling.

“Nice to meet you. No, Cas, don’t take that one, I need it near the garage.”

“We just came to see Castiel,” Eileen says. At his name, Castiel turns and finally sees them, putting down the large motor he’d been carrying as though it weighs as much as a pillow. Eileen smiles. “Hey Castiel, long time no see.”

“It has been a while. To see a familiar face again is very pleasant,” Cas says.

“We also brought you something to eat,” Sam says.

A small smile tugs at Cas’ lips at the notion of food, and they settle down for lunch.

“So, um.” Sam says, clearing his throat. He’s perched on the hood of some old car with Eileen, watching Kevin poke at Castiel’s wings. “I was—I mean my mom was, but also me—was—were wondering if you might wanna come over for dinner tonight?”

Eileen purses her lips. “Hmm, I don’t know. You didn’t even know I was your girlfriend, how can I expect your mom to know what she’s getting into by inviting me?”

“That wasn’t—I didn’t want to—”

“Sam,” Eileen laughs, the teasing tone replaced with sincerity. “I’m kidding. I’d love to meet your mom and have dinner with your family.”

* * *

Dinner is an enormous success, and Dean even manages not to embarrass him too much. (Although Sam suspects that’s more because Dean is worried and distracted than any real mercy.) Dean does, however, ask Sam to go check on Cas the next day too, stating other plans out of town as an excuse.

It continues all week. Monday is as usual, but Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Dean asks Sam to visit Cas in the evening and dodges any questions Sam has about why Dean’s so busy this week and why he can’t check on Cas when he’s already at the yard. He just says it’s been hectic, and he promises he’ll make it up to him, but he also grumbles about how it’s none of Sam’s business.

Sam doesn’t miss the way Castiel’s face falls a bit every time Dean doesn’t get out of the car after him.

* * *

“Sam,” Castiel starts one evening. They’re both relaxing near the treeline, reading under the light of the sun illuminating the pages of Sam’s copy of Hamlet and Castiel’s Wonder Woman comic. It’s probably the last nice day of autumn, snow forecast for the week, and Sam is determined to enjoy it.

Sam perks his head up. “Yeah, Cas?”

Castiel frowns his troubled frown. Sam is getting better at reading him. “Is Dean upset with me?”

“What? No! I mean, I don’t think so, not at all.” Sam rushes to comfort him. “Why, did he say something?”

Castiel shakes his head. “He has not said much to me at all, lately.”

“That’s not ...” It’s Sam’s turn to frown. “I think he’s just being careful. He said someone came to the yard on Friday looking for you?” Castiel doesn’t react, which Sam takes to mean he’s right. “He probably just wants to make sure you’re safe and doesn’t wanna draw attention to the fact that he’s up here all the time. I don’t think you could do anything to make him mad, Cas.”

This doesn’t seem to make Castiel feel any better. He closes the comic and gently lays it on a piece of wood beside him before he stands. He shakes his wings as though to dislodge the dirt and sticks from where he’d been sitting on the ground. They move so fluidly in the wind that sometimes it’s easy for Sam to forget that they’re mechanical, gears and tubes substituting joints and ligaments.

Sam doesn’t know what human conventions really click with him, if he really gets why Dean isn’t here, but he tries to elaborate. “Plus, you know, apparently he ran into this guy Victor he used to have a huge crush on when we were kids and they’ve become friends again. Dean cares about you a lot, but he needs to at least pretend to have a normal life, you know? Spending time with other friends is a safe way to do that, but he’ll be back.”

The confusion is gone from Castiel’s face. It’s been replaced with comprehension ... or just acceptance? He still seems troubled, but he’s looking away, so it’s hard to tell. Shit. Sam said something wrong, didn’t he?

“I mean, not that he doesn’t want to be—”

“Sam,” Castiel says, “I understand. Dean has other priorities. It’s fine.”

He doesn’t seem fine, but Sam stays quiet. Castiel’s wings cast a thousand pinpricks of light when the sun hits them and reflects off again.

Sam thinks the conversation is over, but Cas breaks the uncomfortable silence after a few minutes.

“What did you mean, Dean has ‘a huge crush on’ this person, Victor?” Castiel asks, quoting Sam. The question throws him, but he guesses someone like Castiel must not have much reason to know words like that.

“Uh ... when you have a crush on someone, it means you like them. But more than other people, and in a separate way? Like a romantic way? Where you want to be close to them—hold their hand and maybe kiss them—and be with them all the time and make them really happy?” He blushes a bit, when he realises he’s thinking of Eileen through every word he says.

Castiel is looking fully away now, but Sam sees him nod. “Dean wants these things with Victor?” His voice sounds more robotic, for lack of a better word, than usual.

“Well, he did when we were younger,” Sam says. “Maybe he still does. I don’t really know, I haven’t seen him much either this week.”

Castiel just nods again.

Sam clears his throat, unable to go back to his book now that he’s sure he’s upset Castiel. “Hey, are you sure you’re okay?”

“I am fine, Sam,” Castiel replies. “I think I will eat one of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches now.”

Sam grabs him one from his backpack and watches as Castiel climbs onto the cab of a rusted pickup and lets his wings spill over either side of it, facing the sun.

He doesn’t say anything for the remainder of Sam’s visit, not even when Sam packs up and says he’s leaving. Despite his outward show of detached composure, Sam knows enough by now to know that Castiel thinks and feels very deeply, but he’s not really used to doing either of those things to the degree he has since falling from the sky. Sam isn’t perfect at reading cues, but he decides that this time Castiel might just need some space rather than a teenager poking at his brain. Still, the whole drive home, Sam can’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that in trying to put Castiel’s worries at ease, he’s somehow made him feel much worse.


	10. Chapter 10

“Have you seen Cas today?” Dean asks as Linda hands him a glass of water. He downs it gratefully, eyes watching the sky fill with colour. The sun is setting fast as the end of the day approaches, the days getting shorter as winter draws nearer.

“I thought he was with you.”

Dean shakes his head, lips turning down. “No. I thought he was helping you behind the house.”

“Maybe he’s taking a nap,” Linda says, shrugging. “I heard things moving around all night last night. Guess he was busy.”

“He was?” Dean mutters absently, once Linda has drifted back inside.

His heart aches, guilt swirling uncomfortably in his chest. Truth be told, Dean knows he’s been kind of a dick, avoiding Castiel as much as possible since the encounter with Metatron. But it’s for everyone’s safety, or so he tells himself. Dean has no idea how Metatron managed to track Cas down to the garage, and even though he was the most un-subtle investigator ever, Dean hasn’t been able to shake the feeling that any of their clients this week could have also been looking for Castiel.

So, he’s been laying low and focusing on his work. It’s been a good opportunity to catch up with Victor, anyway, as well as all the other friends he’s been ignoring the past few weeks due to the Cas situation. He kept telling himself that Castiel wouldn’t mind.

Sam had very definitively proven him wrong after checking on Castiel last night.

Dean sets his shoulders, swallowing back his guilt and nerves, and sets off into the yard. He wants Castiel to be safe, but maybe he can relent a bit if it means Castiel won’t hate his guts.

Also, if he’s being completely honest with himself, avoiding Castiel for a week has had the added benefit of stalling the repairs to his wings. It’s not that Dean doesn’t want the guy to recover, it’s just ... Dean likes Cas. Likes having him around, even if it’s just a brief hello every day. He doesn’t know what Castiel plans to do once his wings are fixed, and they’re getting pretty damn close to that point. Thinking about Cas flying away and never coming back has been weighing Dean down more than he’d care to admit. But pushing him away isn’t gonna help any of that.

Dean takes a while to wander in clumsy switchbacks through the scrap yard until he finds Cas at the farthest edge of Linda’s property. He’s on his feet, stepping silently, wings held carefully off the ground. He’s focused intently on Wizard, who darts under spare tires and into the trees in pursuit of a mouse. Neither the cat nor the mouse seem to care about the winged man following them around. The sight makes Dean smile, and simultaneously feel extra bad about ignoring Cas for so long.

He clears his throat. “Hey, Cas.”

Cas doesn’t acknowledge him at all other than to say, “Hello, Dean.”

“What’s up? Heard you’ve been keeping busy around the yard. Linda says you’re a ton of help. Think she wants to keep you.”

“I like helping,” is all Cas says. His eyes remain fixed on Wizard.

An awkward silence passes. Dean feels like they’re both waiting for the other to speak first.

He sighs, diving in. “Look, Cas, please don’t be mad at me. I’m sorry I was ignoring you this week, but that thing with Metatron’s got me on edge. I just don’t wanna run into him, or anyone else like him, again.”

Cas straightens, his wings shaking out a bit, though now that he’s no longer hunched over, Dean can see the tension held in them. “Sam said that you were avoiding me because you were spending time with your friend.”

“What? No. I mean, yes, kind of, I was spending time with some other people, but it was to keep the trail away from you!”

“It’s alright,” Cas continues as if he didn’t hear Dean. “You have already done so much for me. I don’t want to interfere with your life anymore. I’m fine here on my own.”

“You’re following a cat around.”

As if he heard them, Wizard takes off at a run, diving out of view faster than Castiel or Dean can follow. Cas sighs, finally coming to a stop.

“It’s ... possible your uncharacteristic absence has caused me some amount of distress. It’s likely an error, but I just thought you should know.”

Dean frowns. “Are you saying you missed me?”

“In your terms, perhaps that is an adequate simplification.”

“An adequate—Cas, it’s not an _error_ to miss someone when they’re not there. It’s just human.”

“Which I am not,” Cas says stiffly.

Dean rolls his eyes. “Buddy. We’re friends, and you’re used to me being around, so me not being around threw you off a tad. Nothing wrong with that.” Castiel still isn’t looking at him, though, and his wings look almost like they’re drooping a bit. Dean bites his lip. “But hey, for what it’s worth, I missed you too.”

This seems to make Cas pause. “I assumed your need for social interaction was being fulfilled by others. Such as Victor.”

There’s something in Cas’ voice that initially makes Dean frown, trying to decipher the tone, but he feels a smile tug at his lips when it dawns on him. “Cas, were you jealous?”

Castiel bristles. “I was not.”

“You were upset that I was spending time with someone who isn’t you when we’d usually be hanging out,” Dean points out. “Jealous.”

This time it’s Cas who rolls his eyes, his wings shifting in annoyance ... and maybe a bit of embarrassment. Dean tries to stifle his chuckle.

“Okay, alright, hey, I’m sorry,” he says, holding his hands up in surrender. He walks up to Castiel, who’s currently running his hand gently over the hood of an old super 8 convertible, and places a hand on his shoulder. Castiel pauses, then looks at Dean with a stare so intense it takes Dean’s breath away.

“Look, to tell you the truth, I was avoiding you because of Metatron ... but also because we’re getting close to your wings being all fixed, and I don’t know.” He stares at the ground, kicks at a hubcap at his feet. “It’s stupid because I know you don’t belong here, but I don’t really want you to leave.” There. He said it.

When Dean finally looks up, it’s to Cas staring at him, gaze piercing.

“What?”

“You would miss me too.” It’s more of a statement than a question, and it makes Dean’s face heat.

“Well, yeah, weirdo. You’re my friend. Like I said, I like hanging out with you.” He swallows around the lump in his throat, trying to get the conversation back on track. “I can’t say there won’t be days you’ll have to deal with Sam instead of me, but I’ll never just leave you with no warning again, okay? And I don’t have anywhere else to be right now—I’m yours for the night.” He flashes Cas a smile. “I promise.”

He’s gratified to see a small smile tug at Castiel’s lips in return.

“You hungry? ‘Cause I can be at the nearest diner and back with burgers and milkshakes in twenty minutes if you can wait that long.” Nothing says _please forgive me for getting scared—and not just of the feds, but maybe also of how I feel about you_ like a strawberry shake and extra-large fries to share.

Castiel reluctantly agrees to let him go, though Dean sees the way he holds himself tensely as he takes off sprinting back towards the driveway. It does kind of hurt to leave Cas right after he promised he wouldn’t, but the drive does help to get his head back on straight. He’s back in eighteen minutes with food in tow, and the smile that lights up Castiel’s face makes up for every second he’s spent feeling worried or guilty or scared all week.

Dean takes a seat leaning against a tree, and Cas carefully sits in a clear area just in front of him with plenty of space for his wings to sprawl out. They feast on diner food and talk between bites, and Dean doesn’t think he’s ever seen Cas this relaxed, shoulders loose and wings spread wide across the ground. You wouldn’t know the food was cheap from the way Castiel makes a small delighted noise at every bite of his cheeseburger, and, well, if Dean spends more time watching Cas than eating his own food, then so be it.

Wizard even comes to join them, pawing at the empty paper bags from their food before flopping on his back in the last rays of sun. Castiel diligently reaches out to stroke the cat’s tummy, looking wholly at ease.

Dean’s stomach flips a bit when he realises he would pretty much be happy just sitting here sipping milkshakes and watching Castiel smile for the rest of his life.

No big deal, of course. It’s fine. He’s fine.

To prove to himself how ‘fine’ he is, he uses his sudden burst of restless energy to collect their trash and stow it in a tire lying on the ground for pick-up later. “Say, you got any comics lying around?”

“Of course not,” Cas says as he stands in turn, frowning at Dean as though he’s said something horribly offensive. “I would never leave them ‘lying around’; you asked me to handle them with utmost care. They are safely stowed and organised in the glovebox of one of the more intact cars nearby.”

Dean blinks. “Cas. I—I know. It’s just an expression.”

“You shouldn’t think so poorly of me,” Cas says with a shrug, which is when Dean figures out Cas knew exactly what he meant and chose to make a joke anyway. Dean finds himself grinning. Cas just made a joke. Intentionally. Today is full of surprises.

He fetches some comics from inside the cab of a Ford pickup and the two of them settle in the bed of the truck, side-by-side, feet hanging off the edge. Dean is so delighted, he doesn’t even fight it when Cas reads out loud. Cas’ voice is kind of monotone, plus he only reads exactly what’s on the page and doesn’t even try to do any funny voices. But Dean can’t remember the last time he just sat and listened to someone read. It’s easy, comfortable. He doesn’t say anything, just leans a little closer into Castiel’s side as the wind picks up.

* * *

The sun has long since set, all vestiges of light gone, when Dean finally yawns and prompts Cas to close the book. Dean takes the moment to lean back and sprawl across the bed of the truck. After watching him for a moment, Cas joins in, and the shuffling it takes to get Castiel’s wings in a comfortable position for them both is worth the deep sigh they both let out as they settle down, eyes chasing up to the clear starry sky.

Honestly, Dean’s happy to just lie there, speaking up occasionally to tell Cas about a funny joke that Alicia told him this week, or some of the wild things Victor told him about why he’s not looking forward to New Year’s Eve. Cas listens attentively, but seeing as Dean is lying on one of the guy’s wings, he can tell how Cas shifts a little at the mention of Victor’s name again.

“You okay?” Dean asks.

There’s no reply other than a vague humming for a while.

“Sam said you used to have a ‘crush on’ Victor,” Cas ventures into the still air.

Heat rises to Dean’s face before he can stop it. He says, intelligently, “Uh.”

“I was just wondering ... Sam said that when you have one of these crushes on someone, you wish to spend time with them, and be physically close to them, and for them to be happy,” Cas elaborates. Dean can’t speak, seeing as all of a sudden there’s no air in the scrapyard.

“Um.” Dean shakes his head, still feeling the warmth creeping up his chest and neck. “Yeah, I guess. And yeah, I mean Victor ... I _used_ to ... but now because of ...” He swallows. “Why do you ask, exactly?”

“You and I spend a lot of time together, which I enjoy. We are often physically close, though right now we are even closer than usual, which is also pleasant. And it is perplexing to me how much I want you to be happy,” Cas elaborates. “I suppose I wanted to ask how I know if this is a ‘crush on’ you or not.”

“Please stop saying that word,” Dean squeaks.

“Why?”

“Because ...” Dean tries to breathe for a few seconds. “Just.”

Cas, thankfully, seems to figure what Dean is trying to say and moves on. “Sam also said that this feeling is different than feeling these things for others, that it is unique. I’m wondering how to qualify what constitutes ‘romantic’ feelings for someone.”

“I ... I don’t know, Cas,” Dean says, feeling like he’s experiencing this conversation from an outsider’s point of view, the frantic pounding of his heart the only thing keeping him tethered. It helps that they’re both still looking up at the sky—Dean can pretend he’s just having this conversation with the stars and planets rather than the person who was once a meteorite lying beside him. “It’s just something you _know_. You feel it.”

Cas huffs. “I am terrible with ‘feeling’ anything.”

“Yeah, you and me both,” Dean replies. He sneaks a look at him, then feels bad for the frown that his tone puts on Castiel’s face. “Look, Cas ... I can’t really explain it to you any better than that. It’s just part of being human.”

“But I’m not human, Dean,” he says for the second time tonight. “I don’t know what I am.”

Cas turns his head sideways to look at Dean. Dean’s heart constricts a bit when he sees Cas looks genuinely troubled by this, lips set in a frown, a pinch between his eyebrows. He swallows, wanting nothing more than to take that look of uncertainty and sadness away.

“Well,” Dean says, licking his lips and pointedly ignoring the way Castiel’s eyes follow the motion, “a good chunk of you is made of metal. But metal doesn’t have opinions about coffee, or which Superman comic is the best. You’ve got wings, sure, but you’ve also got feelings, and a soul.”

Dean shuffles a little, suddenly warm despite the cool air. The movement brings his body closer to Castiel’s.

“I still don’t know what any of that means for me,” Cas murmurs, his voice a low and soothing rumble that seems to move through the entire car.

“I guess it means you get to choose.” Dean’s voice shakes even as a whisper. “Free will and all that jazz.”

Cas seems to look right into the centre of him. The sounds of the night—a solitary owl call, the wind rustling through the pine trees—seem to swell around them, the stars shining slightly brighter.

“Then I choose whichever option means I can stay with you,” Cas says.

Dean can’t _not_ kiss him after that.

Castiel’s lips are unexpectedly soft, his body unyielding but warm this close. Cas doesn’t react at the first touch of their lips other than to inhale, but he doesn’t pull away. Dean pulls back just a millimeter to give him an out, then fits their mouths together again after there’s no move to retreat. At the third kiss, Cas seems to pick up what Dean’s putting down, pressing his lips against Dean’s in return and letting them part slightly to get a better fit. When Dean leans over Cas a little, moving his hand to cradle the back of Castiel’s skull and better direct him, Castiel reaches out with both arms in turn, wrapping them around his back and his shoulders.

By the time Dean loses track of what number of kisses they’re at, the two of them are thoroughly entangled, the chill of the night chased away by the heat of each other.  There’s a sound like Wizard meowing indignantly in the distance, maybe, and the squeak of Dean’s boot slipping against the metal of the truck, but the only sounds that matter to Dean are the tiny, happy huffs of breath coming from Castiel as they continue to kiss under a blanket of stars.


	11. Chapter 11

Dean’s life is very weird.

He wakes up in the bed of a long-dead and rusted Ford pickup, metal feathers and gears digging into his side. This after spending a healthy part of the night making out with a man with metal wings who’d quite literally fallen from the sky only a few weeks ago, and falling asleep with one of those wings curled around him while Dean held Castiel close to his chest with his own human arms. And they’re hiding in the back of a scrap metal yard because the government is probably looking for Cas, or Dean, or both, and this is the most practical place to hide.

It’s freezing out, the sun is shining on his face, his back aches, he’s covered in frost, Castiel is honest-to-god _snoring_ right into his ear, and Dean would not change a single thing, not one.

Somewhere in the back of his mind is a little niggling thought that developing romantic feelings for and cuddling up with someone who is essentially a robot is probably not the best idea. Dean shoves that thought as far down as he can, pulls Castiel closer—he’s very warm and Dean is very cold—and promptly passes the fuck out again.

When he next wakes up, Castiel’s trench coat is draped over him like a blanket, and Castiel himself is awake beside him, sleepily staring at Dean like he hung the moon.

Dean can’t stop smiling all day. He knows he’s being pathetic and it’s stupid to be this ecstatic when he and Castiel literally just kissed for a while and then slept uncomfortably in the back of a truck in early December. But he doesn’t really care.

Not when he gets to watch Cas blink and snuffle awake in the morning, using the wing not wrapped underneath Dean to arch over their heads and bodies and keep them in the moment together just a little longer. Not when he gets to see the extra grateful little smile Cas gives him when Dean deposits a cup of hot coffee into his hands. Not when he gets to hold Castiel’s hand, his skin warm enough to inject heat into Dean’s.

The afternoon finds him lounging inside the garage, Linda’s space heater going on full blast to keep out the cold, while Castiel and Kevin play around outside. Castiel seems content to follow along with the storylines Kevin invents for their imaginary adventures and wait patiently every time Kevin pauses the game to run and scoop up his sidekick, Wizard, from wherever the cat has wandered off to.

Cas catches Dean’s eye. His lips quirk up ever so slightly, but the way his wings curl closer into his body give away far more about how Castiel is feeling.

Dean smiles back, feeling his face heat up, and not just from the space heater.

Linda chooses that moment to come back into the garage, having pulled on a knit hat. She rolls her eyes. “I keep forgetting I hired two lovesick fourteen-year-olds,” she mutters.

“I’m not fourteen,” Dean replies. He smartly stays silent on the other part.

Outside, Kevin is yelling his next set of instructions. “Castiel! We should play superheroes.”

Cas nods. “What does that entail?”

“I can be Superman, and you can be the bad guy!”

“I don’t want to be bad. What if I want to be Superman?” Castiel asks. His indignant frown can’t be described with any other word than adorable.

“No, that’s me,” Kevin insists. “You can be Lex Luthor.”

Castiel is still frowning. He turns back to the scrapyard and digs around for a while, until he finds what was maybe a fancy hubcap or part of a hood, with a giant S on it. He holds it in front of his chest proudly. Dean snorts. “ _I’m_ Superman.”

“Wait!” Kevin says, and runs back into the house in a flash.

While Kevin disappears into the house, Wizard sees his opening and darts off down the dirt road. Castiel, still holding the hubcap in one hand, picks Wizard up with his free hand and holds the cat against his chest while Wizard meows angrily, his escape plans foiled. Cas makes such an image clutching a disgruntled cat in one arm and a metal plate in the other that Dean can’t help but laugh. Cas looks up at the noise and smiles.

Kevin runs back out, ruining the moment. “If you’re Superman then I get to be the bad guy and use this!” He holds up a cheap, plastic toy gun to show Castiel.

There’s a _clang_ as the hubcap hits the ground, along with a howl from Wizard, who scurries off in indignation at being dropped so unceremoniously.

Castiel is frozen in place, his wings held tense and trembling. His face is blank.

“Cas?” Dean is on his feet, hand reaching for Castiel’s shoulder. His rigid posture relaxes as soon as Dean makes contact, feeling Castiel’s warmth under his coat.

Castiel blinks, then focuses on Dean. “Yes?”

“You okay?”

Castiel thinks about it. He seems a little dazed, but more normal than a second ago. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’m okay now.”

Dean watches his face another moment, worry settling in his stomach. “If you’re sure.”

Kevin is nonplussed. “Can we still play, Castiel?”

“Of course.”

While Kevin and Castiel chase each other around, Dean chases after the cat as he tries to sneak off into the abyss, a.k.a. the scrapyard. His allergies won’t thank him, but he plucks Wizard up into his arms anyway before the cat bounds into the cab of a jeep.

He turns back just in time for Kevin to skid to a halt a few feet away from him, turn back to Castiel and shout, “Alright, Superman, take this!”

Dean hears a little plastic whirring sound as Kevin holds up the toy gun.

Castiel’s eyes fucking _glow_.

His wings extend to their full span, the top edge lit up as well. They look aggressive, on offense. Any trace of familiarity or recognition is gone from Castiel’s expression, replaced with deadly focus. He’s looking at Kevin not like he’s a friend, but like he’s a target.

Dean doesn’t even have time to shout Castiel’s name. He drops Wizard and dives forward.

He crashes into Kevin, pushing them both onto the ground and out of the way. A split-second later, Castiel’s eyes emit a bright white laser that singes the ground where Kevin was just standing.

Heart in his throat, Dean’s head whips around to look at Castiel. He’s prepared for the targeting look to be fixed on them again, ready to grab Kevin and run if necessary. Without thinking, he shouts, “Cas, stop!”

Castiel’s eyes fade back to blue. The cold, disconnected look disappears, replaced with confusion. Then horror.

“Kevin!” Linda shouts, running towards them. Dean uncurls from around him to let the kid up, where he’s immediately pulled into his mom’s arms. “Are you hurt, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, mom,” Kevin says, sounding a bit dazed.

Just as quickly as Kevin got pulled into a hug, Linda shoves him behind her, standing protectively between Kevin and Castiel, glaring fiercely at the latter. “You get away from him!”

Castiel takes a stumbling step back, his hands held up in front him, palms up. Dean’s heart is still pounding madly, but it aches a bit at the mixture of hurt and guilt and confusion and terror on Castiel’s face. “I ... I didn’t ...”

“I don’t care what you didn’t do, you _did_ almost kill him!”

“No ...”

“What do you mean, _no?”_

“I—I’m sorry.” Castiel’s voice comes out as a strangled whisper.

Dean finally finds his voice. “Cas, I ...” He doesn’t know what to say. He turns. “Linda ...”

“I told you he could stay as long as he wasn’t a threat to Kevin, Dean,” she says in a low voice, turning her icy glare on him. She points at the small crater in the ground where Kevin had been standing. “I’d say we’re a little past threat now.”

“Dean,” comes Castiel’s voice, hesitant in a way Dean’s never heard.

“You can plead to him all you want,” Linda hisses, “I don’t care. As long as you go far away and leave my son alone!”

Cas recoils. His face contorts in pain again and he takes another step back. “Dean, please, I don’t know what ... I didn’t mean ...”

Dean takes a steadying breath. “Cas. What the hell was that, man?”

“I don’t— I would never hurt—”

“Yeah, but you almost did, didn’t you?” Dean looks at the blackened earth and reels at the idea that that was almost Kevin. Was almost _him_ , if he’d been a split second slower.

“It’s time for you to go,” Linda tells Cas.

Cas looks at Dean, eyes now pleading on top of everything else. He looks so small. “Dean ...”

“Maybe you should go, Cas,” Dean says, feeling torn in two. “Just for now. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

He looks away then, but he can picture the expression on Castiel’s face. He doesn’t watch when he hears Cas take a few unsteady steps towards the forest. Or when those steps break into a run. Or when the sound fades entirely.

Linda still has an arm around Kevin, who looks like he’s still in shock. “I’m sorry, Dean. But there’s nothing more important to me than keeping Kevin safe. We can believe all we want that was an accident, but I’m still not letting him stay anywhere near us.”

“I get it,” Dean says, his voice sounding far away to his own ears. “I have no idea what happened, I would’ve never ...” He doesn’t know how to finish that thought.

“It doesn’t matter,” Linda says. “It’s over now. We’re going inside. You should go home too, Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah.”

He sits in the driver’s seat of his car without moving for a long, long time.

* * *

His whole chest cavity feels hollow as he drives home. Like Castiel grabbed a chunk of his soul and took it with him before leaving. Before Dean let him leave. Told him to leave. And it’s stupid to think that Cas—Castiel—feels the same loss or longing that Dean does, because Castiel isn’t human. He doesn’t work the same way as Dean, least of all because his eyes fucking glow and fire deadly lasers which almost kill innocent little kids.

It’s stupid to miss Cas or feel bad for making him leave.

Dean feels bad and misses him anyway.

His head hurts by the time he pulls Baby into the driveway at home, entire body aching from sleeping on the ground. He’s so distracted and distraught that he doesn’t notice the red car in the driveway, or the long green coat hanging in the hallway, or the new person in their house until he comes face to face with her, sitting at his kitchen table and drinking tea with his mom.

“Dean,” Mary says. She smiles pleasantly, but there’s apprehension in her eyes, something about her grin that immediately sets Dean on edge. “There’s someone who wanted to meet you. This is General—”

“Please, call me Naomi,” the woman says, standing up and extending a hand. He knows he’s never met her before, probably would’ve remembered that practised smile, the perfectly pressed work clothes, but the name tugs at something in the back of his brain. If he weren’t so off-kilter, he might be able to figure it out, but he lets it slide, shaking her hand in a daze.

“Nice to meet you, uh, Naomi,” Dean says. Now that Naomi’s back is to her, Mary fixes him with an even more obviously worried look, eyes warning him while simultaneously asking _what the hell is going on_. Dean clears his throat. “What can I help you with? My tools are back at the garage, although we’re closed today ...”

She shakes her head. “That won’t be necessary. I actually represent an agency of the U.S. government—no matter, you likely haven’t heard of us—that pursues some more ... unusual investigations, and I just had a couple questions for you.”

“Like what?” Dean feels his head clearing a bit.

As the haze over his thoughts lifts, Dean’s brain chooses an excellent time to click to a couple realisations. That Naomi was who Metatron was talking about to his co-worker that day in the woods. That the car outside is the same station wagon that had chased him through town last week.

He realises these things just in time for Naomi to hold up a photograph of Castiel.

“For starters—have you seen this man?”


	12. Chapter 12

_“Why aren’t you wearing your hat, Claire?”_

_“Because it’s ugly and stupid,” Claire asserts. “And it’s not_ that _cold outside.”_

_“It’s snowing!” Alex says._

_“I’m in fourth grade now, Alex. I’m old enough to walk home from school without my mom and dad, so I’m old enough to decide if I need a hat or not. And I don’t. Especially not a purple one.”_

_“But what’s your mom gonna say?”_

_Claire sighs dramatically. “I’ll put it on when we get close to my house, so she thinks I had it on the whole time. It’ll be fine.”_

_Alex huffs. “Well_ I _think it’s cold, and Jody got_ me _a matching hat and scarf in my favourite colours, so I’m gonna wear them.”_

_“Good for you,” Claire replies sarcastically, accompanying the words with an exaggerated eye-roll. Alex thinks it’s impressive her eyes stay in their sockets._

_Claire’s house is only a five-minute walk from the school, a route the two of them have taken many times. Enough that they feel confident focusing more on their argument than the armoured truck rolling along a short distance behind them._

_They don’t notice anything out of the ordinary, in fact, until they’re in the middle of crossing an intersection. The truck seems to come out of nowhere, barrelling around the corner and straight for the two girls._

_Claire gasps. Alex screams. They can see a few other people nearby, but they’re too far away to do anything to stop the truck. The two of them are alone, frozen in fear in the middle of the road._

_Just as the headlights close in, something swoops in front of the truck, pushing Claire and Alex out of the way in one direction and forcing the truck to go careening in the other._

_Once she can breathe again, Alex looks up from where she’s sprawled on the side of the road, heart hammering in her chest._

_The front of the truck is a mess, caved in and mangled, one of the tires hanging onto the axle crookedly. There are two men in the cab—they both stumble out, alive but shaken._

_Still standing between Alex and Claire and the truck is a man—an angel, really—with a tan coat and giant metal wings extending from his back. One of the wings is still stretched out towards the truck. Alex thinks some of the dents in the fender look jagged enough that they were probably made when the wing hit it and shoved the truck out of the way._

_Alex isn’t the only one staring at the man. Everyone in the vicinity has gone quiet._

_He spares one last glance for the truck and then walks towards her and Claire, wings carefully tucked back. He leans over her and carefully extends a hand._

_“Are you okay?” he asks them._

_“I think so,” Claire replies, accepting the help back to her feet._

_Alex does the same a moment after. “Thank you,” she finally manages to say._

_The man smiles, just slightly. “You’re welc—”_

_“Freeze!” someone yells. It’s the driver of the truck. Except it’s not just the driver and his friend anymore—the back of the truck has opened and half a dozen men in military gear are now in the road, standing in a circle around the man. “Step away from the children!”_

_The man frowns. “I was just—”_

_His words are lost as five of the men swarm him, taking advantage of his confusion to push him to his knees._

_Another man gets on a radio. “General? Yes, we’ve got him.”_

* * *

“I’ve told you for the last time—you’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t know that guy and I don’t know why we’re still talking about this,” Dean says.

Naomi fixes him with a stern look. “I don’t know why you insist on lying to me. We are a government agency—”

“One I haven’t heard of, right.”

“—and you can be charged for obstruction of an official investigation if you continue like this,” she finishes.

“No one is continuing _anything_ until someone tells me what the hell is going on!” Mary shouts.

Dean grips the back of the chair he’s leaning over. “Mom, I told you, it’s complicated.”

“Dean, a military general is sitting in my kitchen, so you better make it real simple, real fast,” Mary says.

“I thought you said you didn’t know anything,” Naomi points out wryly.

“I don’t!” Dean exclaims, looking between the two of them. He’s reeling from everything that’s happening, from how fast everything today has gone downhill. He feels bad enough about making Cas walk away earlier—the idea that the military could close in on him by the end of the day makes him feel sick. Naomi is already here, which means Metatron and other reinforcements might not be far behind. Dean is torn between making her leave and stalling her. Unfortunately, Mary doesn’t seem enthusiastic about either plan. “Look, can we just—”

The sound of radio static fills the air. Naomi calmly plucks a radio from her belt and holds a finger up to silence Dean.

“What is it, Sergeant?”

_“General? Your plan worked. We got him.”_

Naomi smiles as Dean’s heart plummets.

“They got who?” he asks urgently. “What plan?”

“I apologise for taking up your time this afternoon,” Naomi says, standing up from her chair. “It seems you won’t be necessary for this investigation after all.”

“What investigation?” Mary asks. “You can’t just walk away after interrogating my son like that.”

“I assure you I can,” Naomi replies, any agitation from their previous argument gone, replaced with that pleasant smile again. “These are urgent and important government matters. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Despite Dean and Mary’s protests, she sweeps out of the house before either of them can do anything about it. The wind slams the door behind her loud enough to alert Sam upstairs.

“What’s going on?” he asks, appearing in the stairwell.

“I would love to know,” Mary says pointedly.

Sam turns to Dean. “Is this about ...?”

“Afraid so,” Dean says, already searching for his jacket and keys.

“Won’t he be safe with Mrs. Tran?” Sam asks.

Dean winces. “He’s not there anymore. I think they might have captured him, so we gotta go. Now.”

“I’ll grab my shoes—”

“Boys!” Mary shouts. Sam and Dean both freeze. Mary’s jaw is set in anger, and she’s holding Dean’s car keys up in the air. She takes a deep breath before she speaks again, and her voice drops to a low and controlled tone. “I’ve let you both off the hook long enough. _Who_ are you talking about? No one is going anywhere until I get some answers.”

Dean exchanges a wide-eyed look with Sam. Worrying about Cas is taking up all of Dean’s brainpower at the moment, but he still manages to feel guilty that they’ve kept so much from their mom. Maybe if they’d just told her, they wouldn’t be in this position. But as it is ...

“Mom, I promise I’ll tell you everything on the way,” Dean says. “But we have to follow Naomi, right now. If we lose her, our friend could get hurt.” He swallows around the lump in his throat. “Please.”

Mary grimaces, but she takes another breath and deflates a bit. She holds out his keys. “Fine. Let’s go.”

* * *

They catch up to the red station wagon quickly, but it doesn’t take long to figure out where they’re going. A small crowd has gathered on the main street that leads to the harbourfront, and though Naomi’s car weaves into the centre, Dean parks his Baby a couple blocks away to keep her out of the fray.

“So Castiel is ... a robot,” Mary says slowly as she, Sam, and Dean climb out of the car, Dean already taking off at a quick pace.

“As far as we can figure, yeah,” Dean hears Sam reply. They didn’t have time to tell her everything, but she seems to be taking most of what they did say in stride. Mostly.

“And you’re sure he’s not dangerous?”

“He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Sam assures her.

Dean swallows, remembering Castiel’s glowing eyes. He hasn’t mentioned that part yet. There’ll be time later.

As they draw closer, Dean recognises one of the faces on the edge of the crowd through the veil of falling snow. He almost calls out to her before remembering it won’t do any good. Thankfully, she catches sight of them a second later.

“Dean!” Eileen calls, waving. “Sam! Can you see what’s going on?”

Sam catches up to her, places a hand on her shoulder as he stands to his full height and tries to look over everyone else’s heads.

Dean doesn’t bother waiting for an answer. He’s pretty sure he already knows what—who—he’ll find up front. He continues forward, nudging his way around people as he goes. When he catches a glimpse of what has everyone so captivated, his heart leaps into his throat.

“Cas!” he exclaims, speeding up, shoving at the few people surrounding him more forcefully in his haste.

Castiel stands among half a dozen army trucks, flanked by a soldier on either side, each of them clutching one of his arms. His wrists are handcuffed and his eyes cast downward, but at Dean’s shout, they flick back up and zero in on him immediately.

“Dean,” Cas says, surprise colouring his voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Quiet!” one of the soldiers says. Cas glowers in his direction. Dean suspects he could escape their grasp in a second if he wanted, but Cas seems to be waiting to see what happens first, the lines of his body and his wings tight and tense.

“Cas, I thought you were in the forest!” Dean says, nearly screeching to a halt a few feet away from him, ignoring the dirty looks he gets from the guards. “What happened?”

Castiel looks at him with sad eyes. “I _was_ staying out of sight. But there was a truck heading for a couple of children—Dean, I couldn’t do nothing, I had to help them.”

“He did what he was made to do,” Naomi says from behind Dean.

He startles, spins around, shoes squelching in the wet ground.  Metatron stands to the side in Naomi’s shadow. Dean narrows his eyes at them. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Naomi smiles, a wry glint in her eye. “Castiel is an important asset to us. We set up multiple fail-safes in case he was ever to go missing or be apprehended. The core of his conditioning is to protect Americans, to neutralise threats, so all we had to do was put a couple of civilians at risk for a short instant and trust that he’d come running in to save them. As he did.”

“You would harm innocent children just to find me?” Castiel asks slowly, voice tight and controlled, as though it takes a lot of effort to keep it steady. His eyes are wide with horror.

“As I said,” Naomi says. She sounds almost distracted, her words practised, as though she didn’t expect Cas’ question. “You’re a very valuable asset.”

“Slow down,” Dean says. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees his mom, Sam, and Eileen push through to the front of the crowd. “What do you mean, conditioning? Don’t you mean programming? Cas is a robot.”

“Not entirely,” Naomi says. “He’s the first prototype of an elite type of super soldier. He may have been human once, but he’s been mechanically enhanced in enough ways that he’s more machine than anything now.”

Dean feels cold all over.

“It’s not just the wings that set him apart from a regular soldier,” she continues, “that give him an edge. He’s also been modified to be stronger, faster. More resilient. More lethal. But a machine doesn’t have the reflexes or intuition or brainpower of a person, so the ultimate soldier needed to be a combination of the two. Programming and conditioning combined to produce what you see before you.”

Dean’s skin crawls to hear her talk about Cas like he’s a thing. Her voice sounds detached, clinical. “How could you do that to someone?”

Metatron looks at him in shock. “How _could_ we? We’re standing on the cusp of a war!” he shouts. “Barely two months ago, the Soviet Union launched a machine into orbit around the damn Earth. They’re powered up and ready to take us down at any moment. But we’re prepared for that. Since the end of the last war, we’ve been developing our own weapons in secret, in case the need ever arose. Castiel is that weapon.”

“Or he will be,” Naomi says. “Something went wrong on a test flight a couple months ago, and he was struck down off the coast of Maine.” She shakes her head. “We lost all contact—the tracking mechanism must have been damaged in the storm, and it took months to relocate him.”

Naomi finally looks at Cas, that deceptively pleasant and reassuring smile on her face. “But it doesn’t matter now. We’ve found you and we can take you back with us. You can put this little venture behind you. You can come back to the facility where you belong and do what you were made to do.”

“No.”

Naomi’s composure fractures just a little at the word, which Dean takes to mean she’s fucking blown away by it.

“Excuse me?”

“No,” Castiel repeats, voice a little steadier, clearer. “I don’t want to put this behind me. I don’t want to go back with you.”

“You’re a machine,” Metatron says snidely. God, Dean wants to punch him. “You don’t _want_ anything.”

“That’s not true,” Sam says. He steps forward, as if he’s daring Naomi and the other feds to challenge him. Dean feels his lips twitch into a small smile, pride warming his heart. “Cas is a person. He has opinions and wants just like anyone else.”

“More than that, he has _feelings_ too, dumbasses,” Dean adds. “Maybe you were trying to make Cas a super soldier as stone cold as yourselves, but you failed.” Dean is still trembling with worry, anxiety making words stick in his throat. But one glance at Castiel, who’s looking at Dean with a stunned but grateful expression, gives him the motivation to push past it. “He’s maybe more human than anyone else here.”

“He is nothing more than a weapon now,” Naomi says, warmth gone from her voice. “I know that he can learn and adapt, but he’s not a person. He’s property. We’ll need him in case of a war with the Soviet Union, and we as a country cannot risk losing him because he met a boy with pretty eyes after a flight accident,” she says bitterly, eyes fixed on Dean.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Cas says, the softness in his eyes from when he looked at Dean replaced with a glower as he looks at Naomi. As if to drive the point home, he jerks his arms apart, the handcuffs snapping easily. “I chose to leave. I deliberately pulled off my tracker and flew into a storm. I didn’t want to be there anymore, and I don’t want to be there ever again.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” Naomi says.

Castiel looks at Dean, eyes full of the emotion these idiots claim he doesn’t have, as he says, “You always have a choice.” He turns back to face Naomi. “I choose to stay here. I choose Dean.”

Dean’s surprised the snow isn’t literally melting as it falls around Naomi, her expression full of red-hot fury. Metatron just looks disappointed. Disgusted, as he looks at Dean. Well, good. Dean is disgusted with them, too.

“Unfortunately,” Metatron says, “it really isn’t optional. If you won’t come with us voluntarily, we are authorised to use force.”

“Try it,” Dean growls, stepping defensively in front of Castiel. He doesn’t have a gun, doesn’t have any real training, doesn’t even have a crowbar to swing. He doesn’t care. He’ll take them on with his bare hands if he has to. He’s not backing down, not leaving Cas alone ever again.

Sam walks over and stands beside him.

To Dean’s surprise, he sees Eileen step up on Sam’s other side. Mary places herself to Dean’s right.

Dean swallows and repeats, “Try it.”

“Gladly,” Metatron says. He steps back, grabbing Naomi’s arm and pulling her away with him. She looks alarmed and none too amused, but before she can say anything, Metatron picks up his radio and barks, “Open fire on Castiel and anyone in the way.”

Gasps and cries rise from the crowd, people scrambling to run out of the way. Dean hears the click of guns being cocked, and cold terror seizes through his spine, knowing every single one of them is trained on him and the people he loves.

“No!” Castiel roars. He half-shoves past, half-leaps over Dean, spreading his wings to their full span and shielding the group behind them. Guns begin to fire, but every shot ends with a clang as the bullets hit Castiel’s wings and bounce back to the ground. Dean is more worried about the bullets aiming for Castiel’s chest, but apparently that tough-textured skin is good for something after all, as the bullets don’t seem to do much damage. Dean looks around at his family and friends, bewildered that he’s not riddled with bullets, and sees matching expressions of shock and relief.

“Cas, are you okay?” Dean shouts over the cacophony of metal hitting metal and people screaming at they run out of the line of fire.

“Go!” Cas orders, voice strained but strong.

_Like hell_ , Dean thinks.

“Dean, come on!” Mary yells, already backing out of the way and over to cover, one hand on Sam’s arm and the other beckoning to Dean. Dean twists his head around and sees Eileen has already found cover in an alley.

He also sees something that gives him an idea.

Dean sprints for one of the buildings and skids to a stop next to the pickup truck parked on the road. He smashes the cab window in with his elbow, unlocks it, and gets to work hotwiring it. The second the engine roars to life, he sticks his head out the window and yells at the top of his lungs, “Cas, let’s go!”

Castiel has folded his wings to protect his own body, but he unfolds them enough so that he can see Dean, his eyes widening as he takes in the vehicle. “Dean, I said—”

“Shut up and hop on!”

With an exasperated look that almost makes Dean laugh, Castiel uproots himself from his spot, sprinting for the truck. As soon as Dean feels the truck sag and bounce back up with the new weight, he floors it.

In his side mirror, Dean can see Castiel holding onto the side of the bed, wing extended protectively across the back window. “Where are you going?”

“Out of town!” Dean shouts back over the wind. “Away from the people.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed!”

“At least I won’t be getting anybody else killed!”

Dean turns his head to see Castiel glaring at him.

“Don’t give me that look,” Dean says. “You just jumped in front of a hail of bullets.”

“ _I’m_ made of metal,” Cas protests, though he looks somewhat chastised.

“So is this car. Now hold on, the roads are getting slippery.”

Dean knew driving was a good call for an escape as it would take a while for the military trucks to load back up and follow them. But sure enough, there are already a couple on their tail. More and more gunshots come from behind them, but Castiel uses his wings to keep them from shattering any of the glass. Dean presses his foot down harder and takes the fastest route out of town—up toward the lighthouse. His heartbeat pounds deafeningly in his ears.

Finally, they reach a part of the road with no houses or building—just the packed dirt laid out before them. Less risk of innocent people getting hurt, but fewer places to hide and swerve to escape the gunfire.

“Cas,” Dean calls out the window, “I think—”

There’s the sound of something peeling through the air over their heads, followed by an explosion just ahead on the road. Dean jerks the wheel to the right, managing to avoid a face full of fire and smoke, but sending the truck careening sideways into a tree. His left elbow and side slam against something, but he thinks they’re intact.

The same cannot be said for the truck.

“Fuck,” Dean says, climbing out of the cab. Castiel, already on his feet, catches Dean as he stumbles in the light covering of snow. The sound of the military trucks full of soldiers echoes in the distance, getting closer by the second. “ _Fuck_. Cas. You gotta run, I’ll just slow you down.”

Castiel’s eyes are fiery with determination. “I’m not letting you get hurt. I’m not leaving you.”

“Cas ...”

Before he can finish, he sees an idea spark behind Castiel’s eyes. “Dean. Do you trust me?”

“What?” Dean says. Their eyes lock. “Yes. Of course.”

“Then hold on,” Castiel says.

He stands behind Dean, locks his arms around his chest, and gives one powerful flap of his wings, sending them soaring into the air.

What the fuck.

“Cas, you can _fly?_ ” Dean barely manages to keep his voice in a reasonable octave.

He can almost hear the smirk in Castiel’s voice, muffled slightly by the wind gusting past their ears with every pump of his wings. Dean thinks those cylinders on his joints must be some sort of rocket propulsion to be giving him this much lift as he carries not just his own weight but Dean’s as well, which is the coolest thing ever and he is totally gonna get excited about it as soon as his feet are back on the ground. “That _is_ why you were helping to fix my wings.”

“Dumbass,” Dean breathes. He scrambles to get an extra grip on Castiel’s arms and his stomach drops when they swoop a bit to avoid another explosive being launched their way. “This is probably an inconvenient time to mention I have a horrible fear of heights.”

“Yes, it is,” Cas says, and if they weren’t in immediate mortal danger, Dean might’ve laughed.

As they fly higher he sounds of gunfire grow more and more distant, fewer and fewer bullets clanging off Castiel’s wings. Dean’s heart is in his throat, but at least he can admit they’re probably safer up here, soaring over the bay and back around into the endless forest at the edges of the town. It’s beautiful. It’s also terrifying, but objectively Dean supposes it’s beautiful.

“We should do this again sometime. Maybe when we’re not being shot at,” Dean tries to say casually.

“I thought you were afraid of heights,” comes Cas’ voice, raised above the rush of wind past Dean’s ears.

“Closer to the ground would be good, but with you, it’s not so bad.”

The moment of relative peace comes to a screeching halt when Dean registers a sharp sound through the air, much like the sound made when that grenade got tossed in front of their car. Except this one, whatever it is, is heading straight for them.

“Cas!” Dean warns, too late.

The explosive misses Castiel’s wings. It hits him right in the back.

Cas cries out in pain and his wings seem to seize up. The two of them stop gliding through the air and plunge towards the ground. Dean hears himself screaming. Castiel just seems stunned. He sluggishly fumbles his arms around Dean, who tries to grab his hands, for whatever good that will do. Cas seems to try to steady them with his wings, but they don’t slow down.

Sooner than Dean expects, he hits the ground. He feels like his body shatters into a million pieces with the impact.

Everything is blurry, distant. Someone is yelling his name. Frantic. Distraught.

“Dean!”

_Cas._

That’s the last thought Dean has before he blacks out.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points for spotting the Mass Effect reference in this chapter. :D

“—he gonna be okay, mom?”

“I hope so sweetie, just try to stay calm.”

“But—!”

“C’n you please be quiet,” Dean hears himself mumble.

Even the sound of his own voice makes his head pound painfully, and he groans as soon as the words are out. His entire body feels like a bruise. A bit of shuffling, while painful enough to make him curse under his breath, reveals that everything appears to be moving without too much issue, though, which is promising.

“Dean!” Mary says, her voice shaking with relief. He thinks that’s her fingers gently carding through his hair. “Are you okay?”

Dean tries to open his eyes. He winces as the onslaught of light makes it feel like his brain might explode, but after blinking a few times, he can look up without too much pain. Mary is above him, looking down at him with worry written all over her face. Sam is nearby and wears much the same expression. Dean shifts a bit again and realises he’s lying with his head in his mom’s lap—and also that they’re in a moving car.

“Obviously,” Dean says, attempting to sit up. This sends a rush of nausea through his body, and Mary doesn’t have to put much effort into making him lie back down. “Ugh. What happened?”

“I think the army launched something at you guys,” Sam says from where he’s squished on the other side of the backseat near Dean’s legs. “You suddenly just started falling.”

“We found you lying in the snow,” Mary says. “We were so worried, Dean ...”

“I’m okay, Mom,” he says gently. With her help, he manages to sit up—very, very carefully. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” she replies, sounding a little hysterical, “because when we get out of this, you and Sam have _so_ much more explaining to do.”

Sam winces. Dean feels the same.

“We wanted to tell you,” Sam says, “but we didn’t really know why Castiel was here, or what he—”

“Wait ... Cas.” Dean feels his head clear, all of his thoughts narrowing down to focus on that one word. That one person. His heartbeat picks up, as does the speed of his words. “We crashed, I think his wings got hit. Where is he, is he okay—”

“Dean,” Sam interrupts, his tone funny. He says it like Dean’s missing something.

Dean narrows his eyes. “What …?”

“It doesn’t matter right now,” comes a new voice. Dean looks up. Linda is in the driver’s seat, steering the car along the road. She must have come into town once she heard of the commotion. Eileen is beside her in shotgun, twisted around to look back at him.

“It matters to me,” Dean counters. “Turn the car around, we have to find him.”

“Turn around?” Mary says, looking at Dean like he’s crazy. “We’re not going back into that mess. You’re hurt, Dean. We’re going to the hospital.”

Dean grits his teeth through the pain and forces his voice to sound steady. “Mom, I know we haven’t told you everything, but I need you to trust me. He’s my—our—friend, I won’t just leave him in the fucking snow. Those military guys and Naomi, they’re after him, they might take him away. Or hurt him.” He doesn’t mention how much the idea of that happening hurts Dean in turn.

Linda scoffs again, eyes still locked on the road. “I don’t think _he’s_ in danger of getting hurt, Dean.”

Dean frowns. “Linda, what happened with Kevin this morning ... that was an accident. You know Cas, he’s not a bad person.”

“Dean,” Eileen says, and Dean does not like that tone. She signs as she speaks, ending by pointing behind him. “Look out the back window.”

Ice creeping through his veins, Dean turns around.

There are plumes of smoke rising through the air by the harbourfront as they drive towards the mountains. Gunboats sit in the bay, artillery pointed towards the town. If Dean strains his ears, he can hear the sounds of machinegun fire and shouts from the army out of view. Silhouetted against the red and orange clouds of the sunset, a figure with enormous metal wings rises over the buildings. A beam of light shoots out from the figure, blinding white streaming back towards the ground, quickly followed by the wings pulling in as the figure dives back below the roofs. The sound of an explosion rumbles in the distance.

“That’s ... that’s not Cas,” Dean whispers, not sure if his words are a question or a statement.

Sam looks at him sympathetically. “Dean, after you two went down ... one minute we could see him on the ground with you, the next he took off, and when the military started firing at him again he just went berserk. I tried yelling at him, but he didn’t listen, or he couldn’t hear me.” Sam shakes his head.

Eileen adds, “We didn’t see what happened. It’s like someone just flipped a switch.”

The phrasing makes Dean pause. “Wait. Flipped a switch?” He signs as best as he can to clarify with Eileen. She nods, frowning. “Linda, remember what happened with Kevin?”

“Hard to forget,” Linda replies coldly.

“Dean, what are you talking about?” Mary says.

“Castiel was at my yard this morning and almost killed my son,” Linda elaborates.

“ _But_ it wasn’t just out of nowhere,” Dean tries to explain. “Kevin pulled out a toy gun, and that’s when Cas reacted.”

“So?”

“So, what if he was just acting in self-defence? Naomi, the General, she knew about where Cas came from, she said he’s programmed to be a soldier, to neutralise enemies or whatever. Maybe he saw the gun and it flipped a switch, like Eileen said, and it just got flipped again when the army kept firing at him. But I _know_ he’s not just a weapon—he can make decisions on his own beyond the conditioning. All we need to do is flip the switch back off again.”

Linda says nothing.

“Dean,” Mary interjects, “if he’s programmed to attack enemies, then why is he attacking us? Wasn’t he made as a weapon to use against the Russians? Even if there is a ‘switch to flip,’ what makes you think it’ll do any good?”

Dean shakes his head, trying not to lose his ground on this argument. “Maybe some of the programming got messed up when he fell, or Naomi did something else, or ... I don’t know. I don’t know what changed.”

“I do,” Eileen says suddenly. “Dean, they were firing at him while we were all still in town and he wasn’t doing anything—until you got knocked out.”

“You’re saying he’s doing this because of me?” Dean asks. He still feels a little dizzy, but he’s not entirely sure it’s all from the crash anymore.

Sam nods, clearly on the same wavelength as Eileen. “Because he thought they’d hurt you—he was probably upset enough that he didn’t fight it when the switch flipped that time.”

Dean scrubs a hand over his face. They could be completely wrong about this. Castiel might just try to fry him into oblivion with his freaky laser eyes the second Dean gets too close. Maybe whatever humanity he once had is completely gone, overridden by training and programming and God knows what else Naomi and Metatron did to him. Maybe Dean’s been wrong about him this whole time.

But maybe not.

“Linda, stop the car.”

“Dean,” she says, voice tight, grip on the steering wheel tighter.

“I stopped him at the yard this morning. I’ll stop him again.”

“Dean, this is your concussion talking, you’re not going back out there,” Mary says.

“Mom, he’ll listen to me.”

“Or you’ll die!”

“We all might if I don’t try!”

The car screeches to a halt.

Dean looks forward again to see Linda, hands on the gearshift, throwing the car into reverse and turning it back towards the harbour. “You better be right about this, Dean.”

Dean exchanges a wary look with Sam before he steels his resolve. “I am,” he says.

* * *

As they get closer to the waterfront, Dean sees charred paths through the snow that Castiel’s laser has carved, brick walls riddled with bullet holes, a window or two blown out by nearby explosions. But though the streets are a mess, it doesn’t look like Castiel has actually aimed for any of the buildings. He’s going after the army—any other damage is collateral. The realisation makes him feel a little better.

Once they get to the edge of where the army has set up a barricade, Linda throws the car into park and Dean leaps out.

Metatron and Naomi are standing at the edge of the battle zone, the latter shouting into a radio. The moment she sees Dean, her eyes widen. “What are you doing here?”

“Let me through,” Dean says. “I can stop him.”

“No one’s getting through,” Naomi says. Her voice is steady, but there’s something—fear? regret?—hiding behind her eyes.

“You have to tell them to stand down,” Sam says, coming up behind Dean. “Castiel is just defending himself, if you leave him alone he’ll stop!”

Metatron steps forward. “He won’t stop—he’s misidentified his own people as the target, and he’s set to destroy the target no matter what. We’re past fighting and moving on to contingency plans. I’ve got a missile being prepped by the fleet offshore as we speak.”

“He’s only _targeting_ you because you fired at him first!” Eileen says.

“ _We_ didn’t—he did,” Naomi says, turning her eyes on Metatron. He glares back. There’s the sound of more grenades going off in the distance. When Metatron breaks the stare, Naomi fixes her eyes on Dean. She looks troubled.

“I’m going through whether you give me permission or not,” Dean says.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen, you know,” Naomi says. Dean thinks she might be talking more to herself than anyone else. She shakes her head, curses under her breath. “We’ve lost control. I don’t see any way to make him stand down. I cannot guarantee your safety if you go over there. But we’re out of ideas. If you think he’ll listen to you, then I have to pray you’re right.”

Dean lets out a breath. “Thank you.”

“Thank _you,_ ” she says.

With one look back at his family, Dean clambers over one of the trucks and takes off towards the sound of gunfire.

“You have three minutes, or I’m calling it!” Metatron yells. Dean doesn’t stop to think about what that means.

His body aches and the throbbing in his head has picked up again, but he shoves it all down as he runs as fast as he can for where he can see Castiel, dive-bombing the ground. Cas slams down near one of the trucks, sending the vehicle and the three soldiers crouched behind it flying backwards as the impact radiates through the earth. Dean wobbles a little on his feet as the ground trembles under his feet, but he keeps running.

His throat burns from the effort of pulling in so much air. He skids to a stop, swallows, and yells, “Castiel!”

... and promptly has to throw himself out of the way as a laser aims straight for him.

Dean hits the ground. His lungs are heaving, and he probably added a few new bruises to his side, but he clambers upright as fast as he can. Castiel is back in the air, but he’s not attacking, just holding himself there, giving Dean a good look at him.

Castiel looks holy and righteous and furious, coat whipping out behind him in the air, eyes glowing and bathing his face and body in white light, interspersed with dark shadows. He looks completely out of place against the background of warm colours in the sky and the smoke clouding the air. His wings have always looked unreal, but now Dean sees what Naomi meant when she said Cas was built to be a weapon: the feathers of his wings are spread out, each as sharp as a knife. In his hand, Cas holds what looks like one of the feathers but with a grip on the end so it can serve as a sword.

Dean swallows as this creature focuses the entirety of its attention on him.

“Cas, you gotta stop, man. I know you’re scared and confused, but you’re hurting people. This isn’t you.”

Castiel’s eyes glow brighter as though to prove him wrong. Dean gets ready to move, but Cas doesn’t do anything, just remains there with his eyes fixed on Dean.

“I know they gave you some serious upgrades at whatever facility you’ve been locked up in, but just because someone wants you to be something doesn’t mean you have to be it. That’s the whole point of being human, man, and for someone with fucking wings, you’ve got more humanity in you than most other folks I know. You like Superman comics and strawberry milkshakes and cats and helping people just to be nice—you’re a person, not a weapon. You get to be whatever you want to be.”

At those words, Castiel’s wings pick up and send him barrelling for the ground. He lands just twenty feet away, and with his wings still held high and his blade gripped tight, he stalks towards Dean.

“Cas, it’s me,” Dean says, fear making his voice tremble and break. “Look, I’m okay. You don’t have to do this. Hell, you don’t even have to listen to me if that’s what you really want. I just want you to know you have a choice.”

Castiel stands just a couple feet away now. If he fires a laser from this distance, Dean might not even feel it before he drops dead. His heart drums almost painfully in his chest as he realises that the light in Castiel’s eyes is not fading.

“I made my choice—I’m standing here, with you, Cas.” He pauses. “Now you choose.”

Through the blinding white light, Dean thinks he sees recognition flicker in Castiel’s eyes.

“... Dean.”

Cas drops the blade. His wings sag a bit, and the metal blades of his feathers seem to rearrange themselves, tucking in neatly at Castiel’s back, sharp edges covered. The light fades from his eyes until all Dean can see is blue.

Dean lets out a tense laugh. “Welcome back, Cas.”

“Dean,” Cas repeats, sounding more like himself. He looks exhausted, confused, and terrified, eyes blinking rapidly as they try to focus. He looks like _himself_ , and he’s so fucking beautiful Dean could cry. “What ...”

He takes a step forward, stumbles. Dean lunges forward to catch him before remembering _oh shit, wings_. He buckles under the weight, but manages to steady them both on their knees in the snow.

“Hey, it’s all good, Cas,” Dean says, hands rising to cup his face. “It’s over.”

Cas shakes his head as though to clear it. “I didn’t mean to go so ... I couldn’t stop myself. Dean, I thought you were dead, you wouldn’t wake up and they kept shooting and I saw red and ...”

“I’m all in one piece, no need to worry, buddy.”

Before Dean knows what to do, Cas leans forward and pulls Dean into his arms, crushing him in a hug. Dean thinks Cas wraps his wings around them too. He lets him, just pulls Cas in closer and buries his face in his shoulder.

The sound of guns clicking breaks him out of the moment.

“Back away from the robot!” shouts one of the men approaching them. Dean feels Cas tense in his arms.

“Wait,” Dean begins, “it’s okay—”

“Men, stand down!” comes Naomi’s voice. Dean looks up to see her charging towards them, his family and Linda and Eileen in tow. Furthermore, now that Cas isn’t trying to obliterate every person who comes near him, some other residents of the town are poking out of nearby buildings to get a closer look at the situation.

“Disregard that order!” Metatron shouts, pulling to a halt near the approaching soldiers. “This weapon is defective and dangerous, it must be destroyed!”

“Sir, our guns are ineffective ...”

“This is _over_. Castiel is no longer a threat. Those guns won’t be necessary at all,” Naomi says, stepping in front of a couple of soldiers. Nevertheless, a few more continue to hold their guns up in Dean and Castiel’s direction.

“Then we’ll use something bigger,” Metatron says.

Many things happen very quickly. Castiel, still tense, untangles himself from Dean and stands defensively in front of him, wings stretched out to their full span. Several guns are cocked. Mary shouts Dean’s name. Dean grasps Castiel’s shoulders from behind to ground him, while yelling over his shoulder, “Leave him alone!”

Metatron pushes a soldier out of the way to snatch a radio from an intact truck and order, “Launch the missile now!”

For a moment, there’s complete silence. Then there’s a rumble that shakes the ground under their feet, followed by the horrifying sound of a projectile piercing the surface of the water far off the shore and soaring straight up into the air.

All the guns pointed at them are lowered. Cas sags with relief. Dean remains tense as a bowstring, his heart hammering in his ribcage.

 _“You idiot!_ ” shouts Naomi, grabbing Metatron by the shirt and throwing him into the snow. “You’ve doomed us all!”

“I’ve _saved_ us all from the consequences of your hubris!” Metatron replies.

Naomi looks livid. “That missile you just launched is locked onto Castiel’s position. Where exactly is Castiel, Metatron?”

Metatron’s smile fades, replaced with a look of dawning horror as he meets Castiel’s eyes, standing only a few feet from him. Cas glares back at him as though he wants to use his laser eyes just one more time.

“Congratulations,” Naomi says. “Now we all get to die, thanks to _your_ hubris.”

Metatron’s face is fixed in dazed terror as Naomi has him handcuffed—not that it’ll mean anything, just so he won’t try to run away.

With Metatron out of sight, Cas turns back to Dean. “What’s going on?”

“The missile,” Dean says, his voice weak and choked. “It ... it’s an explosive. A huge one. They thought it might be able to kill you, which it probably can, but Cas ... when that thing hits the ground, it’s gonna take out the whole fucking town.”

Castiel frowns. “You mean everyone will die?”

Dean can’t speak through the lump in his throat. He just nods. Cas looks horrified.

Before he can reply, Mary crashes into Dean. She holds him so tight he thinks it might break a couple more ribs. He doesn’t care, hugs her back just as tight.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“I mean, for now,” Dean says, sounding dead even to his own ears.

Mary looks at him sadly, takes a deep, steadying breath. She reaches out to cradle Dean’s face in her palm, which he can’t help but lean into. “You did the right thing, sweetheart. It’s—it’s gonna be okay.”

Dean nods and tries to blink back tears.

As he pulls back from his mom, he takes a better look around. Sam is looking at him with the same sad eyes as Mary, he and Eileen wrapped in each other’s arms. Linda is looking up at the sky, and Dean feels another pang to his heart when he realises it probably won’t even help that Kevin is still back at their home, and that Linda won’t get to say goodbye. Farther back are more and more people, gathered to stand together for their last moments. Some watch the missile’s trajectory, but others stand by near their spouses, children, friends. Dean spots Victor, head hung and eyes closed. Charlie, staring upward in awe. Bobby and Rufus, holding hands.

Lastly, he looks at Cas, who is watching Dean with an indecipherable expression.

“Cas,” he says, “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. And don’t worry. Everything will be okay. I can fix this.”

Dean stares. “What do you mean.”

“The missile is locked on me,” Cas explains. “It will destroy me. But if I fly up to meet it before it gets any closer to Earth, it doesn’t have to destroy anything or anyone else.”

“That’s—what?” Dean brain is whirling, his heartbeat erratic and frantic. “Cas, no, you can’t do that, I won’t let you.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“You can’t leave me!”

Dean didn’t really mean to say that out loud, nor does he mean for a couple of tears to spill over his cheeks, but he’s about to die, so who the fuck cares. Except that he might not die, because Castiel wants to try something colossally stupid and self-sacrificing—proof he learned how to be human from Dean.

Cas steps in close, holds Dean’s face in his hands like Dean had done for him earlier. Dean grabs Cas’ forearms, clutching so tight he might bruise if Cas weren’t who he is. “Dean ... knowing you has been the best part of my life. And it’s thanks to you that I even know that I _am_ alive. You have taught me and given me so much, I’ll never be able to thank you enough. I treasure every moment I’ve spent with you. But this is bigger than just you, or just me.”

“Cas, you’ll _die._ ” Dean’s voice breaks.

“You asked me to choose who I want to be. And right now, I choose to be Superman.” He says it with a peaceful smile.

Dean hates him.

“I love you,” is what he says.

Castiel takes several steps back, away from the soldiers and the town and Dean, until he stands in a clear patch of snow.

“I love you, too,” he says, and extends his wings and takes to the sky.

Dean feels his mom’s hand slip into his, and he grips it tightly as he watches Castiel’s metal wings beat gracefully, gears twisting back and forth, feathers folding and extending. He climbs higher and higher, following the smoke trail up and up, until Dean can barely see him.

He does see the sky light up with the explosion, though.

He barely feels his knees give out, barely feels the cold snow soaking through his jeans, barely feels Mary’s hand coming to rest on his shoulder. There are cheers in the distance—none from the immediate crowd, though. Dean doesn’t look at any of them; he keeps his eyes fixed on the cloud of white and blue and grey smoke lighting up the sky. He doesn’t move for a very long time.


	14. Chapter 14

_Several months later_

* * *

Things settle into a new normal.

By the time spring has well and truly settled in, a new statue has become the centrepiece to the park on Main Street. It depicts a man in a trench coat with wings outstretched and a halo adorning his head. The plaque underneath reads “CASTIEL” and nothing else. Dean and Linda donated a bunch of scrap metal for its construction. Wizard didn’t seem to like it when they cleared out some of his hiding spots, but even so, he’d moped around the garage for a long time as though waiting for someone to come back.

Dean considered melting down the only piece of Cas he has left, the blade from his wings he’d used as a sword, but he couldn’t bear to part with it. Instead it sits on his dresser, and even though it makes his heart ache every time he looks at it, he refuses to move it out of sight.

It had taken a little time for the Winchester household to recover, but with the exception of Dean, things have been better since December. Sam is still doing well in school; he’s lined up to start college in Boston in the fall, Eileen along with him. Dean’s trying not to think too hard about losing someone else so important to him so fast, but the days just keep passing and Sam gets closer and closer to leaving. Both Sam and Mary keep promising him that he’ll be back to visit so often that Dean will barely miss him. Linda threatens to give him more hours of work to keep him busy in between visits. It helps.

Dean’s lips quirk up as he pours water into a pot, thinking of Linda and Mary. The most unforeseeable development after Cas ... left ... had been the two of them getting on like a house fire. His mom and his boss dating isn’t really something he would know how to deal with in the best of times. But they both seem really happy, and he hasn’t lost his job or anything, so he just kind of lets it go.

Of course, it would be better if he could let _Cas_ go. He’d only known him for a couple of months, for God’s sake. There’s no reason for him to feel so hollowed-out all the time. He ignored most of his responsibilities around the house all winter, and only this month did he start hanging out with his friends again. Dean still has his work, he still has his family, hell, he still has his whole fucking city because Cas sacrificed himself to keep the place from being destroyed. He should be fine.

And he _is_ trying to get better, find his own new normal. But it still feels like there’s a hole in his chest every night when he goes to sleep, or wakes up in a cold sweat after nightmares of Cas screaming as he burns up in the upper atmosphere.

Dean shudders, pushing his dreams from last night out of his head. He walks across the kitchen and reaches up to turn up the radio, letting music drown out the imaginary cries echoing between his ears.

In an effort to try to get back to his usual routine, he’s making dinner. Nothing fancy, just a nice meat sauce over some pasta, but involved enough to take his mind off other things for a little while. And seeing Mary and Sam enjoy something he’s made is guaranteed to make him feel better.

Underneath the music, he hears a knock at the door. Mary was expecting Linda to come pick her up after dinner to go to the movies, but maybe she’s early.

“Mom?” he calls into the house. “I think the door’s for you.”

There’s no answer. Sound doesn’t always travel so great in this place.

Dean sighs, staring at his pot of water and deciding it’ll be fine to leave it there for just a few seconds. “Never mind, I got it.”

He gets the door.

It’s not Linda.

Dean stares. “Cas?”

He blinks several times just in case he’s hallucinating, but the image remains the same: Castiel, standing on his front step, wearing worn jeans and a brown coat that’s too big for him. He looks even more disheveled than he had the first time Dean met him, if possible. He looks ... tired. Different.

But his stunning blue eyes haven’t changed.

“My apologies for the delay,” Cas says. “Travelling from the Arctic Circle to Maine is a long journey without a car. Or wings.”

“Your ...?”

That’s when Dean realises the biggest difference: Castiel’s wings are gone. Not just broken or missing parts, but fully disappeared.

Dean gapes and tries to form coherent sentences. “Cas ... how are you here, what about the missile, you exploded, what happened to your wings, what happened to _you_ , just ... _what happened?_ ”

“Well,” Cas says. “The missile hit me. My wings, being only metal alloy, were destroyed in the explosion, but I believe I used them as long as possible to protect myself from the worst of the damage. I eventually fell back to Earth, landed somewhere in the Arctic, and then I walked—and occasionally ‘hitchhiked’—to Maine, and followed the coast until I found the lighthouse I recognised. And here I am.” His face looks carefully neutral, as though he’s concealing a myriad of emotions underneath.

“But ... you’re all in one piece, you look fine—”

Suddenly Dean remembers finding Castiel in the forest with his arm broken and head gushing blood—and how, within five minutes, he’d been the picture of health again.

“You healed yourself from a fucking missile detonation?” Dean asks, bewildered.

“Yes,” Cas says with a shrug, but there’s tension in his shoulders. Cas looks down, and damn if it isn’t weird that Dean can’t look to his wings for clues on his emotions anymore, but he’d swear Cas looks almost sheepish. “Are you angry with me?”

Dean blinks. “Am I ...”

The rest of the sentence gets lost in the collar of Castiel’s coat when Dean throws his arms around him and buries his face in his shoulder. He’s holding on so tight it’s a fucking good thing Cas can heal himself.

It’s not until Cas relaxes and wraps his arms around him too that Dean’s anxiety finally evaporates and he can just enjoy the feeling of Cas so close, smelling like the mountains and the forest and sweat, human heart beating against Dean’s chest.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d still want to see me,” Cas confesses, his breath brushing past Dean’s ear.

“Then you’re a fucking idiot,” Dean mumbles into his coat.

Slowly they pull apart, keeping each other close. Cas doesn’t seem to want them to be too far apart either, Dean notices, his chest feeling full at the thought.

“I didn’t know if you’d feel the same,” Cas continues, “now that my wings are gone. _I_ don’t feel the same. Even though they were given to me without my consent, they were still a part of me. I know that I said I never knew what I was with them, but I’m not sure who I am without them either.” He takes a deep breath. He can’t meet Dean’s eyes. “And most of all, I’m not sure if you truly want me either way.”

“Cas ...” Dean is at a loss for words. “I’m sorry about your wings, I know they were a big part of you. But I don’t know how I could’ve made this any clearer. When it comes down to it—I love _you,_ and that’s it.”

Cas looks up then, gazes at him as though Dean knows the answer to every question in the universe.

“As long as you’re here, then that’s already more than I could ask for.” Dean laughs mirthlessly, thinking about the last few months. “More than I deserve, quite frankly.”

Cas’ eyebrows knit together. He looks at Dean so earnestly, eyes so blue and bright and full of emotion that Dean doesn’t know what to do with it all. “You deserve everything.”

Dean doesn’t have much to say to that. So, he just steps back in and presses his mouth to Cas’.

After a sharp intake of breath, Cas relaxes into the kiss, far more quickly than he had the first time. Dean’s heart aches to think that they only had one night to be together like this before things blew up—literally. He’s not letting go of this second chance, not for anything. Castiel’s hands come up to hold Dean’s face, so gently, while all Dean can do in return is clutch Cas so close to him with both arms that hopefully the two of them will never have to separate again.

However, the sound of boiling water hitting a hot burner is a great motivator.

“Shit—hang on,” Dean mumbles, ignoring the flutter his heart makes at the half-dazed, half-disappointed look on Cas’ face when Dean hastily pulls away and sprints to the kitchen. He puts out the flame and moves the pot away, no severe damage done.

He’s almost afraid to turn back around, just in case Cas isn’t there. But the sound of footsteps, when he’s pretty sure they’re not Mary’s or Sam’s, indicates otherwise. Dean can’t suppress the grin that pulls at his lips when he sees Cas followed him in and is now standing on the other side of the Winchesters’ kitchen table. His long fingers trail curiously over the tabletop and pick up the salt and pepper shakers, one after the other, to examine the contents before putting both back down.

Cas is here, in his kitchen, in his home, and Dean couldn’t be happier. Well, he’d give Cas his wings back if he could, but he’s here. He’s really here.

Castiel’s eyes wander around the room, stopping on the fridge and the curtains and the staircase and the family photos on the wall. When he realises Dean is staring at him, he seems embarrassed, stands up straighter, and looks at Dean steadily. Dean might be imagining the colour rising in Cas’ cheeks, but he hopes he isn’t, because it’s cute as hell.

“Sorry about that,” he says, gesturing to the stove. “Linda’s coming to pick up my mom so they can go see a movie tonight, but I was trying to get some food on the table for her and Sam before she left, except now I made a mess, but it’s okay, I can clean it up, it’s just ...” He trails off and meets Cas’ gaze. “Um. Will you stay for dinner?”

“I’ll stay for as long as you’ll have me,” Cas says, and Dean’s not sure if it’s supposed to be a reassurance or a question.

“How does forever sound?”

Cas’ smile is more blinding than the way the sun used to catch on his wings. “Perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, I really hope you enjoyed it. ♥


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